I feel like our haven of trail witches have put a curse on me. First I tweak my ankle during the build up to the haunted trail, then the race beats me down something good only to make it through to put the cherry on top the misery sundae by breaking a toe (on the good foot) in a manner so unmanly I am not about to reveal it. I’ve learned a couple of surprising things since then. One is the revelation that trimming trees for four days is probably not the brightest choice all hobbled up – something tells me some of our readers probably already knew or could foresee that bit of knowledge. The other surprise comes courtesy of Brad who is bringing us one of his adventures from his recent New England trip. In fact, my new birding tidbit comes courtesy of that little space between the third and fourth word in his title. I was about to insert the expected “-” when I decided to dig into this a bit more. Brad is absolutely correct, as of July 2024, the American Birding Association has removed the second dash between Night and Heron. You can read more about that change and several other updates in their 2024 supplement (link here). Note, once again, they FAILED to rename the Ring-Necked Duck arrrgghhh! Enough of my whining, it’s time for Brad to introduce us to one of his newest lifers.
Take it away Brad…
During a recent photo assignment to New England, Jan and I were enjoying the low tide near Boothbay Harbor in Maine. We traveled to Maine with our friends from the Boston area. We also had the bonus of having Allyson join us for an abbreviated weekend.
This also happened to be our first photo outing with our brand “new” D500 camera bodies, well, at least new to us. The old trusty D300’s had served us well, but had begun showing age-related faults (over 200,000 clicks on both of them) during our Alaska assignment. We had a mere six days after Alaska to get “new” cameras before the New England trip. I used all of my trusted camera sites ordering bodies, batteries, and chargers. I’m still working on the Wildlife Intrigued expense report. Everything arrived in time, some only just, for the trip to Boston and Maine.
Our first morning in Maine, low tide was at 9am. After breakfast, we all rushed down to the waterline to see what we would see at low tide. The rented house where we stayed, was about 100 feet from the water. The tide was nearly at the lowest point of the morning, down over 8 feet from high tide the night before. Drying seaweed was all over the newly exposed rocks and made walking slippery. Jan was photographing a Great Blue Heron in the shadows next to our dock. Allyson was wading in the cold Atlantic water looking for crabs, lobsters, and snails. I was watching the sunlit part of the terrain opposite our rocky point, when something caught my eye.
Did you spot today’s featured feathered friend? Hit the jump to read more about this well camouflaged discovery.
At first, I thought it might be a juvenile GBH. But the stripes and stockiness didn’t seem right. It moved confidently among the seaweed and rocks, watching the water for something. A couple of weeks ago, Sam.Rappen published a story titled Celebrating Herons. She had a photo of a Black-crowned Night Heron, or BCNH, which looked a lot like the Yellow-crowned Night Heron (Nyctanassa violacea), or YCNH, I thought I had just photographed.
(Even though Brian said the word count for Wildlife Intrigued was up from last year, it’s below my word count target for the year. I’m still going to use abbreviations for the herons in the following comparison.) Adult BCNH and YCNH are a piece-of-cake to identify. However, at first glance, juveniles of each are nearly identical. Both have orange-ish eyes, depending on the light. The eyes of the YCNH can be a bit darker orange, towards reddish-orange as opposed to orangish-red (thanks Crayola). Both herons have the stripey-brown plumage of a juvenile; not very much help there. Their legs are a bit different. The YCNH has skinny legs sticking out below their bodies, where the BCNH has more beefy legs blending in with their bodies. In adults, the YCNH wings do not cover much of the leg (if any), but with the BCNH, their wings can cover everything down to the ankle, or what looks like a knee to most casual observers.
If they grace you with the opportunity to see their extended necks, the YCNH has a bit longer neck. Their profiles are also a bit different, if they hold still long enough. The BCNH head and bill reminds me of a raven profile (larger head with shorter bill), whereas the YCNH looks more like, well, a heron profile (smaller head and longer bill).
Shoutout to Sam for helping me learn more about a +1 bird for us. Sam, did I get all (or most) of that info correct?
Throughout the morning, this juvenile worked its way inland, walking “upstream” along the quickly receding tide. This seemed to be a perfect strategy as many critters are caught in small tide pools when the water recedes. It was about then that the GBH Jan had been photographing decided to fly away, nearly right over my head. She wandered over to see what I was up to. Now the YCNH had two large pieces of glass pointed in its general direction.
If there were a game show called “Staring for Food” (and based purely on the number of streaming channels available, there just might be one), I think herons, in general, would win. This one certainly learned early to watch carefully for a meal to present itself.
Several times while I watched, it plunged its face into the water hoping for something to eat. Nine out of ten times it came up empty. However, the one time I saw it catch something, the crab (its favorite food) was much too large for it to handle and the YCNH had to let the crab go.
Normally I would have included something about mating habits or nesting. But with a juvenile as the subject matter, that just seems creepy. I think I’ll wait for this one to grow up a bit more. But you can see the top of its crown beginning to change into the adult plumage.
I think my subject is done posing for the day. Two cameras must have been too much for it.
Thank you for reading. If you want to see more Yellow-crowned Night heron photos, please visit here.
Credits:
Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing. Thanks to Jan for some of the photos in this article.
Life Intrigued 