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Spot a bird feather in your Kansas yard? Why picking it up could land you in court

By
Guest Columnist
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Possessing bird feathers could get a person cooped up in prison.

The possession of feathers and other parts of native North American birds without a permit is banned by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, says the website of the U..S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

That act “protects wild birds by preventing their killing by collectors and the commercial trade in their feathers, and extends to all feathers, regardless of how they were obtained,” that site adds. “There is no exemption for molted feathers or those taken from road- or window-killed birds.”

What are the penalties?

For each unauthorized take of a protected bird or one of its parts, a violator of the MTBA may be subject to penalties of a fine of up to $15,000, imprisonment for up to six months, or both.

“Obviously, the law is not intended to prosecute kids for keeping a Blue Jay ( Cyanocitta cristata ) feather found in their yard, although it is technically illegal to do so,” says the website of the Atlanta-based Fernbank Science Center .

The Fish & Wildlife Service is permitted to use discretion in enforcing the act, meaning it may choose not to prosecute apparent technical violations.

How did the act come about?

The MBTA, which took effect in 1918, implements international conservation treaties the U.S. reached in 1916 with Canada, in 1936 with Mexico, in 1972 with Japan and in 1976 with Russia, according to the Fish & Wildlife Service .

The act was initially targeted at protecting birds at a time when some species were being hunted nearly to extinction to satisfy the demand for big, wide women’s hats adorned with exotic bird plumes.

The act includes bans on possessing “feathers in your yard, a dead bird on the road or even a bird nest on your front porch,” the Fernbank Center website says.

“The law was made very strict, with few or no loopholes, so that ‘plume hunters’ as they were called at the time, could not simply say, ‘I found these feathers’ or, ‘The bird was already dead,'” it says. “Such proclamations would not matter since it is illegal to possess or sell any part of a bird, no matter how it was obtained. The strictness of the law gave it some teeth when it came time to prosecute offenders.”

The MTBA outlived the popularity of feathered hats

Feathered hats eventually went of style, due largely to the MBTA, the Fernbank Center website said.

“Unfortunately, the MBTA is still quite relevant today as wildlife officials deal with the overwhelming problem of illegal trade of wild birds and other animals,” it said.

The MBTA has been interpreted to cover any bird that can be proven to naturally occur in the United States or its territories, according to the Fernbank Center website .

“Several conventions and amendments to the original Act have been added over the years and with the Migratory Bird Treaty Reform Act of 2004 all species native to the United States or its territories, which are those that occur as a result of natural biological or ecological processes were added to the official list of protected species,” it said.

Which native species are protected?

The Fish & Wildlife Service website offer a list of birds for which the MTBA bans the public from possessing their feathers without authorization.

Species on that list include cuckoos, loons, falcons, woodpeckers and perching birds , which are the most common order.

Legally hunted waterfowl that include species of geese and swans are among species on the government’s list of birds to which the act does not apply .

The feathers possession ban also doesn’t extend to non-native birds such as peacocks .

Possessing feathers shed by a peacock is legal, though killing peacocks for their feathers is not.

What other exceptions are there?

The government also allows exceptions to the MTBA for the authorized use of feathers by Native Americans.

Registered members of federally recognized tribes may possess the feathers of native birds for cultural and religious use, the Fish & Wildlife Service website says.

Such feathers may not be sold or traded, it adds.

“People or institutions wishing to use bird feathers, bones, or whole specimens for educational or research purposes must apply for permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and their state wildlife or natural resource agency,” the Fish & Wildlife Service website says .

Lacey Act was violated in 2009 in Lawrence

The MBTA’s enactment came 18 years after the passage in 1900 of the Lacey Act, which makes it illegal to transport or sell a bird in one state that was illegally hunted in another.

Federal officials said an Oklahoma man violated the Lacey Act in 2009 when he tried to sell an undercover Fish and Wildlife Service agent parts of a bald eagle, a gold eagle and a crested caracara, as well as a Native American dance bustle containing hawk feathers.

The man was sentenced in 2013 in Wichita to a year on federal probation

Feathers seized in the case were sent to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Eagle Repository in Colorado, which provides eagle feathers to Native Americans for use in Indian religious and cultural ceremonies..

How is the MTBA ban worded?

The MBTA specifically says that the public, unless permitted by regulations, may not “pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture or kill, possess, offer for sale, sell, offer to purchase, purchase, deliver for shipment, ship, cause to be shipped, deliver for transportation, transport, cause to be transported, carry, or cause to be carried by any means whatever, receive for shipment, transportation or carriage, or export, at any time, or in any manner, any migratory bird or any part, nest, or egg of any such bird.”

As reported in the Topeka Capital Journal

Lettuce Eat Local: Tahini Fits To A T

By
tammiehoeme
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0

Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local

Many years ago, I formulated a personal food-compatibility theory: give me any food, and either — if not both — peanut butter or black pepper could go with it. (Or chocolate, but that’s a given.)

It might not be a match made in heaven every time, and the food might not be actually enhanced by the addition, but it could still work. You try it — salmon (pepper), marshmallows (peanut butter), celery (either). Something like mangos could still seem a little tricky, until I think of any Asian-style coleslaw with mangos and peppery peanut dressing, and there we are. 

You have to really like pepper and peanut butter for the hypothesis to ring true, of course, but if you’ve noticed my email address or seen me unscrew the top of the pepper shaker at a meal, you can guess how I feel. 

I still maintain my theory’s reliability, although I have to admit with only a slight cringe that my devotion to peanut butter has shifted to a different nutty spread in the past years…hello tahini. Tahini, though it tastes nutty, is not made from nuts, but rather from sesame seeds. The seeds are hulled, lightly toasted, and ground into a creamy, thickly pourable paste. It’s earthy, savory, toasty, and somehow addictively appealing to me. 

Brands definitely differ in quality, and if you’ve had a not-so-good experience, I completely understand. Some tahinis I’ve sampled can have a pasty mouthfeel, or can leave you with a bitter aftertaste. Many are unsalted, and like many good things in life, seriously benefits from a proper addition of salt (I typically stir some right into my whole jar, and then garnish whatever I’m eating with more coarse salt). 

But good tahini, mmm, it speaks my language. Maybe it’s the sign of some sort of nutritional deficiency or mental unsteadiness, but often if I get the thought of tahini in my head, it’s very hard to shake; I will put it into or with or on anything, including simply a spoon. Tahini is my new peanut butter.

Add it to the title of any recipe, and I suddenly want to make that. A quick search on my Pinterest serves as an illustration of my appreciation of this sesame paste, with pages of pins on anything from dijon tahini dressing and roasted vegetable tahini curry to tahini date milkshakes and sriracha tahini fudge. It’s so distinct and yet so versatile; I want it in all the ways.

I liken my response to tahini-related stimuli as to the contagion of yawns. Some people are particularly susceptible to catching a yawn when they see someone else yawning, and I have it so bad that even typing this I’ve had to yawn multiple times. I’ve heard it said that there is a positive correlation between empathy and yawning contagion, and I try very hard to be empathetic — and apparently I am also tahini-pathetic, without trying at all. I see tahini; I need tahini. 

Great, now I’m afraid I’ve done something very unhelpful to myself. Now I have to yawn when I think about tahini. Now pardon me while I go *yawn* get a snack….

Tahini Banana Bread 

How appropriate — I didn’t think about it until just now, but I literally did replace the original recipe’s peanut butter with tahini here. This is a good starter recipe for those of you newer to tahini, as you can taste it but it isn’t overpowering at all; plus it’s very different from hummus, which is the most common American experience with tahini. Spread slices with more tahini, of course, or cream cheese.

Prep tips: bake in muffin cups if you prefer, reducing the baking time to about 20 minutes. 

½ cup tahini, plus more

12 oz [1 ½ cups] mashed extra-ripe bananas (about 4)

¼ cup ricotta or sour cream

¼ cup local honey

2 eggs

a good splash vanilla

1 ½ cups (freshly-ground) whole wheat flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

4 oz chopped chocolate of choice

Toss the tahini, bananas, ricotta, honey, eggs, and vanilla into a blender, and process until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and pulse until combined. Transfer to a buttered bread loaf pan, and bake at 350° for 45-60 minutes, until edges are pulling away from sides and center is just set. Finish with a good drizzle of tahini (and some coarse salt if tahini is unsalted).

Preparation for 2025 Kansas Spring Turkey Season

By
Steve Gilliland
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Well, March is about to show us whether she will go out like a lion or a lamb, which means the 2025 Kansas spring wild turkey season is in the “wings” (you see what I did there?) If you haven’t already, now is the time to begin preparations. Check out your camo, which seems to shrink each year as you get older. Camouflage is important in hunting most everything, but is probably most important when hunting wild turkeys, as they have eyesight like no other, and can spot suspicious movement from an unbelievable distance.

I’ve never been much of a “purist” in anything I do, but especially not when hunting wild turkeys. The guys that make the videos and sell the calls and other turkey hunting gear often park themselves against a tree next to a clearing. They put their decoy directly in front of them in the clearing and attempt to call the birds into the decoy in the clearing. That makes for really good videos, but doesn’t work for me, as I can’t hold still enough or be quiet enough, long enough to make it work. It was either adapt to my weaknesses or go “turkeyless.” So, I have learned to set myself in some cover along the route I hope the turkeys will travel and put the decoy in front of me but well off to one side or the other, which draws the gobbler’s attention away from me as they hone in on the decoy. This amounts to more of an ambush, but has harvested me more turkeys that trying to be something I’m just not. Also, if morning hunting, be careful NOT to set up too close to their roost, and choose a spot where you can come-and-go without being seen.

Also take your shotgun out and shoot a few shells through it so you know just where it is shooting. That sounds funny, since after all, you are using a shotgun, but trust me when I say, turkeys can be missed. Shells recommended for turkey hunting contain big BB’s so there are way fewer of them in a shell, and they can only wound a turkey all miss altogether because you are shooting at the neck and head, which are relatively small targets. The rule of thumb I have read, is to aim at the point on a turkey’s neck where the feathers begin, that should put BB’s in its head as well as its neck and kill the bird cleanly.

Turkey calling is another contentious subject, especially to the more purist hunters. In my opinion, its good and helpful to study and learn basic turkey calling techniques, but don’t let fear of making the wrong sounds keep you from hunting. While its good to know enough so you are not screaming out bad things about a gobbler’s mother, I feel its much more important to be camouflaged correctly at the right location, be quiet, be still and have confidence in your shooting than it is to be a champion turkey caller.

There you have it as KS spring turkey season is almost here. Turkey numbers in some parts of the state have been on the decline the last few years, but good turkey hunting can still be found. So, get your permit and take a friend or a kid turkey hunting this year. It’s a great way to introduce someone to hunting and to Explore Kansas Outdoors.

Steve can be emailed at [email protected].

Good fire plan goes wrong

By
Milo Yield
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0
Thayne Cozart
Milo Yield

Now’s the time of the year when farmers and ranchers in the Flint Hills burn their native tallgrass rangelands.

It’s a necessary smoky task because fire as a necessity if the prairies are to remain productive. Done correctly and timely, the annual burn kills invasive trees like the eastern redcedar and other undesirables like sumac and buckbrush.

The prairies respond to fire by immediately growing back tender green shoots of grasses and forbs that cattle eat like candy and gain weight like crazy. Native Americans knew the value of fire, too, and burned areas near their camps to entice the buffalo to come and graze. Green grass wuz like Door Dash — bringing food to their door.

And, when enuf mature eastern redcedars are burned and killed, rather rapidly the native tall grasses return and the natural springs start running again. Cedar trees are nasty water wasters. The huge wildfire in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas a couple of decades ago are living testimonial to the restorative value of fire.

Prairie fires can be easy or hard, simple or downright deadly, as recent fires across the Great Plains have demonstrated. Wildfires are terribly hard to control, and dangerous. By contrast, controlled fires, done correctly, have good crew, appropriate equipment, and the crew follows a comprehensive plan.

However, like everything else in life, prairie fires can be humorous, too. Here’s a Flint Hills’ fire story that yields a great mental home video.

The setting wuz Chase County in the middle of the Flint Hills. It wuz in the days before drip torches were being used to start fires. Just plain ol’ sulfur matches were mostly used for fire starters.

The fire crew wuz a motley bunch, who ranged from bowlegged old cowboys with decades of experience with prairie fires, down to young, boisterous whipper-snappers eager to earn their stripes. There were folks in pickup trucks with water tanks and pumps, on tractors with blades and front-end loaders, and a few on horseback.

Several smaller pastures had already been burned and the young’uns were getting impatient. So, one of the rowdy young bucks a horseback volunteered to start the burn in a novel way from his horse. The crew said, “Well, have at it!”

So, the lad retrieved a worn out rubber tire from a pickup, tied a wire around it, tied his rope to the wire, dripped some oil on the tire, and set it on fire.

When the tire wuz burning, the rambunctious rider hopped on his horse, gave a loud “yee-haw,” applied the spurs, and headed off at a gallop along the fence where the plan wuz to start the fire line.

The beginning wuz good. The tire dragging along behind the horse wuz starting the fire line picture perfect. But, then the whole she-bang went haywire. As the horse and rider headed downhill on the first steep slope, the tire got to rolling on its tread and picking up speed. It quickly came hard on the heels of the horse and that started a prairie-fire train wreck.

The horse shied and bucked to evade the burning tire and shed its young rider into the rocks, then headed off pell-mell — erratically zig-zagging around the pasture, spreading fire willy-nilly with every bounce.

The rider quickly put himself safely upwind of the fire and dejectedly headed on foot back to the start, where he knew full well what wuz coming. As he drifted head down into the crowd, he wuz met with every sort of Bronx cheer. “Sure ‘nuf getting the fire started.” “Great idea. You need to patent it.” “What’s your horse’s name again, Flame?” And, so on.

The fire ended up just fine. The crew changed plans and easily contained it. The horse returned unhurt, but with no tire attached.

I guess it wuz examples like this story that brought about the drip torch.

***

Last evening Nevah and I watched the 100th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry on TV. It wuz a great three-hour show because we both love country/western music.

Current artists saluted Country Hall of Fame members, past and present, by singing the hall of famers’ biggest and most memorable hits. Parts of the show got downright emotional for me and brought a tear to my eye, especially the part involving Randy Travis. Plus, with most country/western songs you can understand the lyrics and they usually tell a story of some kind. That gets a big thumbs-up from me.

The only thing about the anniversary Opry show that I would fault is that not a word wuz mentioned about Mighty Merle Haggard. Seriously, how could he be left out? He’s my all-time favorite C/W singer.

***

I need to explain a needed correction from last week’s column about drilling into the Earth’s hot core to generate electricity. I wrote that the hole needs to be dug with lasers down 12-13 miles.

I should have written twelve to thirteen miles, because when 12-13 miles appeared on paper, the hyphen disappeared and it came out 1213 miles. That’s a difference of about 1200 miles, and it way deeper than the new drilling method can go. Sorry ’bout that.

***

Personal words of wisdom for this week: “Time reveals all and heals all, but it usually behind leaves a scar or scab.”

“Pneumonia Vaccine Saves Lives”

By
Guest Columnist
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0

Over one hundred years ago, the gold mining industry of South Africa had a problem: too many workers were dying from pneumonia. They turned to Dr. Almorth Wright, a British physician who had successfully created a vaccine against typhoid fever that saved countless lives of British soldiers in World War I and other wars. Wright and his colleagues developed an inoculation of killed pneumococci bacteria which resulted in a substantial reduction of cases of pneumonia and death in the miners.

Pneumonia is an infection in the lungs that causes inflammation and accumulation of fluid or pus, making it difficult to breathe. Pneumonia can be caused by viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Risk factors for pneumonia include old age, young children, smoking, lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, other chronic medical conditions, poor air quality, and more.

Antibiotics have been revolutionary in treating bacterial pneumonia, decreasing the rates of death substantially. Unfortunately, antibiotics do not treat viruses, and early use of antibiotics in the course of a virus will not decrease the risk of pneumonia. If someone has cold symptoms, rest, fluids, time, and an expectorant like guaifenesin can be helpful. If symptoms get worse with the return or persistence of fevers, worsening cough, shortness of breath, or chest pain, please seek medical attention.

Vaccines for pneumonia, influenza, haemophilus influenzae (Hib), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) have significantly decreased the rates of pneumonia. The pneumonia vaccine is now recommended for infants and young children, all adults over 50 years of age and those with certain chronic medical conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lowered the age recommendation from 65 to 50 in October 2024 since adults aged 50+ are 6.4x more likely than younger adults to get pneumococcal pneumonia.

The pneumonia vaccine has changed and updated through the years with the types of bacteria that are targeted. If you have already received a pneumonia vaccine, depending on what you have received and if it has been several years or if you have chronic medical conditions, you may want to talk to your healthcare provider about getting a new pneumonia vaccine.

Prevention is the best way to fight disease. To prevent pneumonia, it is helpful to wash your hands, do not smoke, consider vaccination, and help keep your immune system strong by getting good sleep, exercising, and eating healthy.

Andrew Ellsworth, MD. is part of The Prairie Doc® team of physicians and currently practices Family Medicine at Avera Medical Group in Brookings, South Dakota. Follow The Prairie Doc® at www.prairiedoc.org, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Threads. Prairie Doc Programming includes On Call with the Prairie Doc®, a medical Q&A show (most Thursdays at 7pm streaming on Facebook), 2 podcasts, and a Radio program (on SDPB), providing health information based on science, built on trust.

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