1911 J Grinnell, Range of the Mockingbird in California. 297 



breeding species and permanent resident. It is in this San Diegan 

 district, more particularly about suburban gardens and citrus 

 orchards, that the species appears to thrive better than elsewhere 

 in California. Moreover, the bird is becoming more and more 

 abundant as the region is brought into a higher state of cultivation. 

 In Los Angeles County during the past twenty years I have wit- 

 nessed the continued increase both in its numbers and the area 

 inhabited by it. 



Originally a bird of the wide, open "wash," or arroyo, sparsely 

 dotted with small live oaks, clumps of elder and sumach, and 

 patches of prickly-pear cactus, the Mockingbird has now come to 

 be the most conspicuous avian tenant of the highly cultivated 

 orchard and garden. The original habitat of the bird, to which it 

 was restricted, is of scarcely less extent now than formerly; and 

 Mockingbirds are still to be found there in numbers which appear 

 to me not materially greater or less than twent}' years ago. But 

 an area of several times this extent, which was formerly either 

 bare grass-land or else thickly covered with chaparral, and in either 

 case at that time unoccupied by the Mockingbird, has now been 

 altered by cultivation until it evidently affords an attractive and 

 permanent abode. Many an area in the vicinity of Pasadena, 

 where fifteen years ago such birds as Horned Larks, Meadowlarks, 

 Lark Sparrows and Burrowing Owls abounded, now know these 

 species no more; but the Mockingbird is in evidence in every block. 

 As a specific instance, all that area of North Pasadena between 

 Monk Hill and Devil's Gate was once pasture land or at best a 

 grain field, where I never saw a Mockingbird. A recent drive 

 through the same section, now a populous suburb, disclosed the 

 presence of the Mockingbird in numbers. 



The Mockingbird is accordingly one of the relatively few species 

 of birds which have not only withstood the effects of cultivation, 

 but which have notably increased as a result of it. In looking 

 over a map of the Pacific slope of Los Angeles County, knowing as 

 I do the local conditions both now and formerly in much of that 

 area, I believe I am conservative in estimating that the Mocking- 

 bird now occupies five times the area that it originally did. In 

 other words there are now fully five times as many Mockingbirds 

 in the region as formerly. I believe similar conditions to hold 



