THE CONDOR 
A Bi-Monthly Magazine of 
Western Ornithology 
Volume XXIV January-February, 1922 Number 1 
[Issued January 25, 1922] 
THE REDDISH EGRETS OF CAMERON COUNTY, TEXAS 
By J. R. PEMBERTON 
WITH NINE PHOTOS 
the region between Brownsville and Point Isabel, Cameron County, Texas. 
The avifauna of this region is exceedingly interesting because of the pres- 
ence of numerous species whose centers of distribution he in Mexico. Austin 
Paul Smith in the Condor for May-June, 1910, gave an excellent description of 
the land birds but neglected to fulfill a promise of a later paper on the water 
birds. I found the water birds to be fully as interesting as the land birds. 
The Mexican fishermen of Point Isabel upon learning that I was interested 
in bird life told me that I should visit Green Island, which they said was a breed- 
ing ground for all the species of water birds found thereabouts. They got me so 
excited that on May 9 I hired two of them to take me in their boat to the island. 
In pitch black darkness about three in the morning we started, with a good 
fast boat, a brisk fair wind, plenty of provisions and water. During the five 
hours it for to make the sme miles to the island the fishermen told me many 
interesting facts concerning the region. 
Green Island lies about thirty miles north along the coast from Point Isa- 
del, the latter town being just north of the mouth of the Rio Grande River. The 
Gulf of Mexico proper is shut off from the mainland by a sand bar which par- 
allels the coast for hundreds of miles, in fact from Vera Cruz to near Galves- 
ton. This sand bar lies from three to ten miles from the coast, the bar being 
nearly straight but the distance from the coast varying because of irregularities 
in the coast line. The mainland is extremely low in elevation, scarcely over 
29 feet, and the sand bar likewise. Consequently there are spots within the La- 
guna de Madre, as the enclosed bay is called, from which neither the mainland 
nor the sand bar can be seen, and in le, up this Laguna we were nearly 
always out of sight of one of the two sides. Imagine my surprise therefore 
- when [I learned, first from the fishermen and then by actual test with a stick, 
that the depth of the water varied from one to three feet over the entire area. 
This great shallow Laguna is literally alive with fish and thus a source of food 
for the great throngs of fish- -eating birds which inhabit it. My guides demon- 
strated what can be done with a small hand cast net by simply throwing it at 
L) URING the month of May, 1921, I had an ever-to-be-remembered outing in 
