Joseph Mailliard Describes Wildlife in the “Tamalpais Country”
Editor’s Note: This essay appeared in the 1923 (Vol. II, no. II) issue of Trails, a yearbook published annually by the California Alpine Club based in San Francisco. Joseph Mailliard (1857–1945) settled in the San Geronimo Valley with his parents in 1873, where young Joseph developed an interest in natural history along with his brother, John Ward Mailliard. Together they collected bird specimens, nests, eggs, and insects, thousands of which were eventually donated to the California Academy of Sciences. Joseph was appointed Honorary Curator and then Curator of the Department of Ornithology and Mammalogy in the Academy. A valued contributor to the fields of ornithology and natural sciences, Joseph’s observations for the out-of-doors is evident in this article.
“Earlier Days in Marin County”
By Joseph Mailliard
Half a century ago when I came to California, the wild life of Marin County and the Tamalpais country was most abundant. The trip from San Rafael to San Francisco at that time required a stage journey to San Quentin and a voyage of an hour and a half on an old tub, the “Contra Costa.”
In summer, huge wagons drawn by twelve or fourteen oxen hauled great loads of cord wood over the roads then existing. The depth of the dust created by this heavy traffic grinding up the dry earth was almost unbelievable. This dust bed was a delight to the bands of quail that dotted the roads, where they could be seen in the early morning or toward evening, dusting themselves to their hearts’ content. Needless to say, many travelers carried guns and took “pot shots,” with the result that the crippled birds were always hobbling about trying to keep up with the flocks. The number of cripples increased as the season advanced. But the quail gradually learned to be wary of approaching teams, and to keep posted a sentinel whose alarm note would cause the flock to disappear into the brush in short order.
In the Fall, wood ducks used to be rather common along Lagunitas and Paper Mill Creeks, while a few mallards and green-winged teal occasionally came in for fresh water. Even a fulvous tree-duck was noted from time to time. The bay marshes, of course, were the feeding grounds of large numbers of wild ducks.
When acorns were plentiful, or the crop of madrone berries was good, large flocks of band-tailed pigeons appeared in the Tamalpais region. Many were slaughtered for the markets. The recent protection afforded these birds by a closed season of several years has, fortunately, been successful in greatly increasing their numbers. They will probably return to the old feeding grounds in Marin County as relative food supply may, from time to time, affect their movements.
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In 1868 it was no uncommon thing to find bleached horns shed by elk, scattered through the brush on Tamalpais and on the adjacent ranges. Most of these relics of a noble race were more or less disintegrated, or partially eaten by rodents, but occasionally fair specimens were found. The only museum specimen, of which I am aware, is a single antler, in quite a fair state of preservation. This was around our ranch house for a number of years and was finally presented to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California. Better examples of elk antlers which formerly adorned barn doors and ranch houses of Marin County have disappeared.
While their going was much less rapid than that of the elk, the bear also vanished before the increasing human population. In those early days numbers of bear still existed on the Bolinas Ridge. Tales were told by the vaqueros of the period, about grizzlies being roped for sport. Whether or not these bears were grizzlies will never be known, as no parts of essential to their proper identification have been preserved. There is every probability that all the bear in Marin County at that time were of the species now designated as the Northwestern Black Bear (Ursus americanus altifrontalis). This is the common black, or brown, bear of California, whose color ranges from one extreme to the other with the individual. Some grow to a large size, an adult male in the prime of life attaining a weight of over five hundred pounds. They often have a brown coat of so light a shade that the owner might easily be mistaken for a grizzly.
In 1880 I encountered my last bear in Marin County near the end of Cataract Gulch, but a bear was occasionally reported from the Bolinas Ridge forest for a few years after that time.
Deer were sufficiently numerous in those days to make parts of Marin County good feeding grounds for “mountain lions.” The fondness of those large cats for uncooked venison is the cause of sad havoc wrought among deer wherever the “lions” are present. As the deer are now increasing rapidly in the protected areas it is possible that an occasional “mountain lion” may wander into the Tamalpais country, even at this late day. Although there had been none reported for a long time, in 1897 one came into the Rancho San Geronimo and was shot at by one of my men — and missed!
The black-tailed deer at that time were protected by a closed season extending only from January first to July first, and yet a goodly number of them still remained in the county. A few lingered on the hills close to San Rafael as late as the early ’70s, for I remember hunting them there at that time.
In the earlier days hundreds of deer were shot in this country and sold in the San Francisco markets. Near the head of Big Carson Creek, at the crossing of the Pine Ridge trail was located a deer hunters’ camp of such importance as to have been named on some of the early maps of that region. It has been stated by old settlers that as many as seven hundred deer have been shipped out of this camp in a single season.
Strange to say, it was not until the spring of 1879 that I heard of saw a coyote on our ranch (San Geronimo) or on Tamalpais. About the first of April of that year I was on my way to fish in the recently-completed reservoir known as Lake Lagunitas. I was riding along the top of the ridge on the east side of Carson Valley at evening and had dismounted to tighten the cinch of the saddle, when a coyote hove in sight only a short distance away. The incident is grave on on my memory for, while I was looking at the coyote, something moved at my feet. I brought my heel hard down upon the object. It was a rattlesnake, and my heed crushed its head. Later coyotes became more numerous in the country, and were often heard but seldom seen. Rattlesnakes, however, are becoming scarcer as every man’s hand is against them.
“Varmints” such as wildcats, ‘coons, and foxes were plentiful. One winter in the late ’70s over fifty of them were treed by our little terrier and thereafter captured. The same species of small birds, squirrels, wood rats and mice, as, existed here have a century ago, still remain, though in diminished numbers.
Of the larger mammals that used to roam old Tamalpais, the Columbian Black-tailed Deer is only representative. The manner in which this deer is thriving under protection is proof that although game diminishes before increasing human population it need not entirely disappear. The great profusion of former years is gone, but the day is yet distant when those who love to roam the Marin hills will be deprived of the thrill of seeing wild life in its natural habitat.
