DECREASE OF GAME 15 



Occupation and settlement of a country by white men affects game 

 birds in many other ways than through hunting. The reclamation 

 and cultivation of the land not only introduces such major disturb- 

 ances as a decrease in the birds' food, but involves minor dangers to 

 bird life in the form of telegraph wires, oil pools, and so forth. The 

 rapid-flying birds are the most frequent victims in the former case, 

 particularly during seasons of wind and fog. Many birds which do 

 not meet death immediately suffer injury and are later caught by 

 predacious animals. Among waterfowl the Mud-hen is the bird which 

 most often meets death by flying against a barbed wire fence or tele- 

 graph wire. In Los Banos marshes it is not uncommon to see a Mud- 

 hen still hanging from the barbed wire of the fence it struck, or lying 

 beneath a telegraph line. There are several records of the Sora and 

 Virginia rails having met death by striking a wire. Among the shore 

 birds phalaropes are common victims of overhead wires. H. C. Bryant 

 (MS) found one live Northern Phalarope and two dead ones, each 

 with a wing completely severed from the body, beneath telegraph wires 

 west of Madera, Madera County, May 14, 1915. F. H. Holmes found 

 two or three dozen phalaropes beneath telegraph wires near San Jose, 

 in November, 1898 (Emerson, 1904, p. 38). Emerson (1904, pp. 37- 

 38) contributes considerable information in this regard. On Septem- 

 ber 8, 1898, he found several dead sandpipers and a phalarope with a 

 broken wing under some telegraph wires in a salt marsh near Hay- 

 ward, Alameda County. Furthermore, several sandpipers were seen 

 to meet death by flying against the same wires. In all, on this one 

 day, forty dead birds were picked up beneath the wires. A trip to the 

 same place the next day revealed thirty dead birds, mostly Northern 

 Phalaropes, and Red-backed, Western and Least sandpipers. Again 

 on March 11, 1903, he found a number of birds of each of the above 

 species at the same place. It is apparent that ovly species that fly 

 at heights corresponding to those of the wires are exposed to this 

 danger. The birds chiefly affected are species also of migratory and 

 gregarious habits. The large number of Mourning Doves reported 

 as found beneath telegraph wires in southern California shows that 

 even this species suffers in the same way. 



Ponds of crude oil, such as are common in the oil fields and near 

 pumping stations, constitute a menace to bird life, and in some locali- 

 ties the toll exacted of game birds is considerable. H. C. Bryant 

 (1915d, p. 184), on May 11, 1915, found the bodies of more than three 

 hundred birds in an oil pond about 50 by 150 feet in extent, at Brito, 

 Merced County. Along the shores of the pond there was a winrow 

 made up of bones and feathers of many other birds that had met the 

 same fate. Among the game birds noted were five different species of 

 ducks, one goose, several Mud-hens, some Avocets, Black-necked Stilts, 



