Birds in Los Angeles County 150 Years Ago

From our archive of The Western Tanager, an article from 1951 that was titled BIRDS IN LOS ANGELES SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, by Henry W. Splitter. We revisit it now, 75 years later.

A great many interesting facts about birds can be gathered from local newspapers of the 1870's and l890's. Immense flocks of Sandhill Cranes, now rare, covered the hills near Ballona Creek. These great birds, with a wingspread greater than that of a swan, were so unafraid of man that hunters could go among them as among so many hens and kill large numbers by using their guns for clubs.

In migration season, great wedges of wild geese flaw over Los Angeles (population then about 25,000) enroute to or from the coastal marshes. Their honk-honking could be heard plainly by people in their homes and offices.

A strange collision between migratory birds and modern civilization occurred in March, 1883. A flock of wild ducks journeying north at night ran afoul of the tall electric light mast illuminating several blocks at First Street near Alameda, Like moths blinded at a candle flame, they hurled themselves at the lamps. Nearly all of the lamps on the mast were found broken next morning, and half a dozen dead ducks were picked up at its base.

Ducks, geese and other water birds found a veritable paradise in the vast marshes then extending behind the Venice ocean front sand dunes from Ballona Creek almost to the present Ocean Park. In November, 1886, an observer standing on the Del Key hills saw on the blue ocean below him a flock of at least tan. thousand ducks and geese, riding the waves 00 close together that they seemed a solid mass, Just beyond them was another flock nearly as large, and to the left still another. When such aggregations of birds rose into the air they literally darkened the sky.

Hunters, unhampered by game laws of the modern type, slaughtered the birds whole- sale. At Tell’s Lagoon, in the present canal area of Venice, seventeen men one day in January, 1876, killed 1326 ducks and 28 geese, a bag not at all uncommon at the time. The surplus game was sold in the open market at Los Angeles at about 5 for $1.00, in the country for a penny a piece. In Santa Monica lived a professional hunter typical of a considerable number of such persons, who earned an average of $5.00 a day the year round. In one winter, between September 15 and March 15, he shot 2200 ducks and 400 wild geese, besides thousands of snipe, plover, curlews, rabbits and other game. So profitable was the business over a period of years that he was enabled to purchase his own home plus half a dozen building lots.

Quail were so numerous in the Southland that a packing company was established in 1881 to can the multitude of carcasses brought in.

The principal newspapers in the Los Angeles of l870 - 1900 were the Herald, Star, Express, Commercial, Tribune and Times. Certain editors seemed mare interested in nature than others, but no one of than would really qualify as a conservationist by-present standards. There was one exception, possibly, in Southern California, the scientific minded editor of the Santa Barbara Press in the l880's. He told with a good deal of ironical applause about the business of sling-shotting Santa Barbara hummingbirds on a large scale for use, when stuffed, as decorations for ladies hats.

Henry W. Splitter