[Pollinator] Fwd: Pollinators & Smuggling: TX man pleads guilty to smuggling dead hummingbirds

[De Angelis, Patricia]

Good question! Here's another article that postulates they were possibly
intended as good luck charms.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Dallas-man-charged-with-smuggling-dead-5483979.php

Patricia S. De Angelis, Ph.D.
Botanist, Division of Scientific Authority-US Fish & Wildlife
Service-International Affairs
Chair, Medicinal Plant Working Group-Plant Conservation Alliance
5275 Leesburg Pike, MS: IA
Falls Church, VA 22041-3803
703-358-1708 x 1753
703-358-2276 (FAX)


On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu> wrote:

> Dear Patricia:
>
> Thanks so much for circulating this item.  I wish there were more details
> in this newspaper article.  Was the man selling fresh, whole corpses or was
> he bringing in taxidermic specimens for people with stuffed bird
> collections?  One wonders if the prospective buyers planned to wear them on
> their hats.  It was perfectly legal to do so over a century ago.
>
> The reason I mention this is that I saw a travel documentary on Mexico
> City on Public Television about a year ago.  The woman shopping in the open
> air markets noted that some stalls sold magical items.  This included dead,
> drying hummingbird corpses on sticks to use as love charms.  Have we
> reached a point in America in which such charms have a big enough customer
> base to become lucrative but illegal?  Either way it's not good for the
> 200, or so, hummingbird species native to the tropical Americas.
>
> Peter
>
>
>>
>>
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