A Mid-Winter Anthony Green Heron
A Mid-winter Anthony Green Heron
On the first day of the year 1928, the writer was enjoying a few hours of recreation at Lindo Lake, a small body of fresh water near the town of Lakeside, San Diego County, California. This lake, through the far-sightedness of the County Board of Supervisors, has been purchased and set aside as a public park, with shooting prohibited. As a result, a great assemblage of unsuspicious water-fowl is to be found there during the winter months. A fringe of fair-sized willow trees skirts the lake on the west and south, and in one of these, resting on a leafless limb that hung close over the water, a solitary Anthony Green Heron (Butorides virescens anthonyi) was seen. Perhaps on account of this exposed position, coupled with a probably short residence about the lake, the bird seemed shy and soon flew, alighting in the uppermost branches of another tree farther down the shore. Twice the writer flushed this lone straggler from such elevated perches, when the heron, tired of being followed, took refuge on the opposite side of the lake and evaded further pursuit.
Laurence M. Huey
San Diego Society of Natural History, Balboa Park, Sam Diego, California, January 23, 1928