By BETH QUINN

ASHLAND -- When the prioress of an English abbey wrote the first flyfishing treatise in 1496, anglers got the feathers used in their craft from slaughtered birds.

These days Kate Davidson of Siskiyou Aviary has a better idea.

"They're getting more environmentally conscious now. If they want to keep fly-tying, they better settle for molted feathers," she says. "They used to go out and slaughter these birds and that helped endanger them, ironically."

Endangered pheasants from Asia provide the feathers for Davidson's burgeoning business, but the Internet provides the market. Eight-five percent of her sales come via the World Wide Web, where fly-tyers, mask makers, sculptors and costume designers from around the globe search for exotic plumage and find it at Siskiyou Aviary.

"I just happened to stumble across her," says Steve Schweitzer of Geneva, Ill., who linked Davidson's site to his own Midwest Flytyer Web site. "My site probably leapfrogged her into this mode of business."

With 1,500 visitors a day, Schweitzer's home page provided Siskiyou Aviary with essential exposure to the elite fly-tyers who create classic Atlantic salmon flies which, when mounted, sell for as much as $1,000 each.

For purists, such flies must be created from the feathers specified in recipes written in the 1600s and 1700s, and tied onto antique handmade hooks.

"They used feathers in those flies that are now considered illegal or even extinct," Schweitzer says. "She can source out feathers that I wouldn't otherwise be able to get."

Davidson is licensed by the state to deal in legal exotic feathers, most of which come from the 200 birds that live in the weathered barns of her East Main Street farm. Inside wire-sided pens strut iridescent Impeyan pheasants from Nepal and cowled Golden pheasants from China. The glossy black Edward's pheasant from Vietnam is extinct in the wild and the multi-colored Swinhoe's pheasant from Taiwan could be soon.

To make sure that doesn't happen, fly-tyers who once bought only feathers with skin now are more willing to consider high-quality molted plumage.

"I'm looking for the perfect shape, the perfect coloration, because it's art now. It's going into the frame," Schweitzer says. ``That's why you buy whole skins -- because you have that choice. Molt feathers don't offer that. You get what falls."

The perfect feather also is the quarry of mask maker Daniel Artt of Pahoa, Hawaii, who wouldn't consider using dyed plumage from lesser birds.

"I guess it's a little like seeing a rainbow in a painting or actually viewing a rainbow," he says.

Artt spends hundreds of hours gluing as many at 5,000 feathers to hand-molded leather to make masks which sell for up to $10,000 each.

"Every single feather that goes into the mask is there for a reason," he says. "Feathers are an incredible gift. They really added wings to my dreams.

"Kate has provided me with some of the highest quality feathers I've been able to get in years," he says.

Producing quality feathers takes time and food. Most pheasants don't acquire their full adult plumage until their second year, and diet is the key component in quality.

"You've got to feed them well. You've got to give them high proteins. You have to give them greens -- spinach and alfalfa," Davidson says.

In spring the breeding pairs produce dozens of eggs that she incubates and hatches. The molt follows, running from June to September.

"I'm out here constantly picking up feathers," she says.

Davidson places the feathers in trash bags to gas for bugs and then washes each by hand in a large tub. After air drying the feathers on towels, Davidson sorts them into small plastic bags. A half-dozen sold by the bag cost from $2 to $4, rare tail feathers fetch up to $2 each and full tails as much as $9.

Before the Midwest Flytyer Web page steered flyfishing artisans her way, Davidson's birds didn't really turn a profit.

"It was like a very expensive hobby. It was so obvious but dense that the feathers could be a product that you could do something with," she says.

But after just a few months of Internet marketing, she projects a profit of $8,000 this year.