Another tale of triumph for
conservationists is that of the
great egret. The bird’s image is
embroidered on the breast of Golder’s
shirt and hat, the symbol of the National
Audubon Society.
“That’s where the organization
started,” he says.
“Those wispy plumes,” Golder says
as he points to the striking white longlegged
shore birds, “were almost the end
of the great egret.”
Hunted for their plumage, which was
used for garnishing hats worn by women
around the turn of the 20th century, the
great egret’s story is much the same as
the brown pelican’s. It was only through
measures taken during the Audubon
Society’s beginnings in the 1880s and the
protesting of the mass slaughter of the
elegant birds that the species was saved.
Some of Audubon’s earliest conservation
efforts were concentrated close by.
“After the turn of the century,” Golder
says, “there was only one colony that was
known of in the early 1900s and that was
at Orton Plantation.”
The colony was guarded by one of the
state’s first hired game wardens.
Today, there are no such threatened
inhabitants of the Bird
Islands but these aviaries are
still guarded as if they were. The birds
depend on these sanctuaries — a place
where food is readily available and most
predators are too far away to swim.
When a predator is spotted, birds take
flight, blanketing the sky like a quilt of
winged creatures.
Golder began his career with these
birds more than 20 years ago as a graduate
student studying under Dr. James
Parnell, professor emeritus of biology
at the University of North Carolina
Wilmington and one of the pioneers in
the Bird Island studies.
In the mid-60s, before Audubon or
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the
N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission
took note of the common nesting
grounds, young professor Parnell was just
learning his way around Wilmington. He
had come to teach at the University of
North Carolina Wilmington after receiving
his Ph. D. in Biological Sciences at
North Carolina State University.
His graduate research prior to coming
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to Wilmington dealt with birds — an
animal he says he learned to appreciate
with his mother, an avid bird watcher,
and father, a hunter, in the small town of
Timmonsville, South Carolina, where he
grew up. When he migrated to the coast,
Parnell found the colonial nesters of the
Cape Fear.
At first glance Parnell’s islands appear
pristine, untouched and natural. But
the islands were not formed by years of
naturally accumulated sand. They are
man-made spoil islands formed when the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged
the river channel years ago.
These birds, Golder says, “have to have
it all. They wouldn’t be here without
these islands.”
It was the work of Parnell and his associate
Robert Soots who first documented
the use of the spoil islands and enticed
other agencies to them when 40 years
ago, Parnell says, nobody really cared.
“The most important thing is that we
made other folks — who are in the position
to do so — aware of what needed to
be done,” Parnell explains. “That’s one
of the things university people can do.
We can go out and study and point out