“Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century”
One of the great things about traveling is the conversations you have with fellow travelers about everything, ranging from other interesting places to visit, their hobbies, their careers and/or educational backgrounds, and, of course, books. Never mind that I already have a huge to-read pile (of both books and magazines) but I’m always on the look out for recommendations, especially when they fit with my own interests like history, anthropology, or museums.
So, when Susan (I think it was Susan – possibly it was Andrea or Marina) mentioned “The Feather Thief” while we enjoyed a meal aboard National Geographic Orion back in January, my ears perked up. This book follows the crime of a young American musician who, deeply obsessed with the art of salmon fly-tying, plots and executes a brazen burglary of the Tring Museum in the U.K. (a small extension of the British Museum outside London). Why the Tring? Because, as the book cover tells us, it held the “largest ornithological collection in the world.” The specimens, many collected over a hundred years earlier and carefully preserved, were extremely rare, and many of those bird species are today endangered (such as the many varieties of Birds of Paradise located in New Guinea). The attraction: their gorgeous plumage.
Edwin Rist, the thief, had specific goals in mind, mostly related to his obsession with salmon fly-tying, but he was also motivated by the money he could acquire by splitting his stolen booty into smaller batches to sell to other collectors. You can probably guess what that means – the decimation of what once had been a coherent, organized, and labeled collection and the loss of any knowledge its study could have brought.
While I’ve never considered myself a birder, I do love seeing the beautiful and wondrous variety in which they come. And, from an admittedly snooty point of view, I enjoy being able to brag that I’ve seen birds that you can only see if you travel to certain places, like one specific island in the Marquesas, or one specific island in the Galapagos. I hope I still have a chance to see some of the magnificent birds that are mentioned in this book in their native habitats.
Ultimately, the book does leave you unsatisfied, but not through any fault of the author. It’s purely a result of the thief’s actions and the maddening limitations of investigation and recovery. Still, if you love history, museums, birds, or fly-tying, this book will be of great interest.
The Far Places 