The Black-crowned Night Heron 



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but usually it is jerked out with 

 emphasis or ill-nature, waurk, or 

 work. Harmless as the monosyl- 

 lable may appear when uttered 

 singly, and when divested of its 

 ghostly suggestiveness, the din 

 raised by a heron rookery at full 

 juvenal tide is mighty and dis- 

 cordant. 



As the nesting season imposes 

 greater obligations upon the par- 

 ents, they hunt by day as well as 

 by night, being found sometimes 

 singly but oftener in pairs, moving 

 from place to place with laggard 

 wings beating in stately synco- 

 pation. 



This bird may often be seen 

 to advantage about the unfre- 

 quented lakes of San Joaquin Val- 

 ley or in the lava country of the 

 northern interior. Here it moves 

 about sluggishly at the edge of a 

 pool, or else, posting on a com- 

 manding block of basalt, one will 

 stand sentinel by the hour, head 

 withdrawn between shoulders, like 

 an adjutant in a great coat, un- 

 observing (apparently), unmindful 

 of the passage of time, a somber 

 gray figure which embodies better 

 than anything else the dear deso- 

 lation of the wilderness. 



Nesting is strictly a social 

 affair. A colony comprising any- 

 where from a score to a thousand 

 individuals will bed down together 

 in the rushes which line a group of tide-guts in the San Mateo marshes, 

 or they will occupy a tule island at Los Banos, or they will, with as easy 

 grace, take to the treetops. A thriving colony has for years nested in 

 the shade trees, — mingled live oaks, cypresses and eucalypti, — of the 

 Cohen place in Alameda. Electric cars roar by within a block, but your 



Taken at Los Banos Photo by the Author 



OLD MODELS 



1913 



