Night-herons on the prowl following heavy rains
During the deluge of rains this month, readers have been asking about an odd-looking bird prowling their water-laden lawns, neighborhood ditches and the edges of overflowing ponds.
Some people sent smartphone photos of the bird, and no matter how dimly lit the picture, it always reveals a yellow-crowned nightheron. The bird has been thriving in rain-soaked neighborhoods.
Even though yellow-crowned night-herons reside in local neighborhoods all year, they’re not often out and about where people can see them; they usually skulk for prey. But the birds haven’t needed to skulk for food, as the heavy rains have brought forth a cornucopia of their dietary delights, such as frogs, toads, crawfish, crabs, minnows, water snakes and insects.
Food lay before them easy for the picking … or plucking.
The name night-heron is a bit misleading because the bird forages for food both day and night but tends to favor the hours of dusk
and dawn. These days, adult birds may be busy feeding chicks throughout the night.
The stocky birds are in the same family as their longer-legged cousins — great blue herons and great egrets, which inhabit the shallows of bayous, creeks, swamps, lakes and water-filled ditches. But unlike their cousins that stand stock still waiting to strike prey, yellowcrowned night-herons stalk prey with slow, steady steps along the edges of waterways or in shallow water.
Among the characteristics that make the birds inconspicuous during normal weather —assuming Houston has normal weather — is their stocky build, with short thick necks and cryptic grayishblue plumage concealing them against a backdrop of muddy ditches and stream banks or obscuring them in the dimness of dawn and dusk.
A look at the birds in good light reveals their elegantly plumed blackand-white heads with a broad band of yellowishwhite on their crowns. Breeding birds display wispy plumes streaming from the back of their heads.
The birds breed throughout local neighborhoods lined with pine trees. They gather twigs and small branches to build platform-styled nests, which they ensconce in the tree canopy while slightly depressing the center of the nest to cradle eggs and chicks.
People report hearing loud if not eerie-sounding squawking sounds uttered by the nesting birds. The strident calls are a warning to intruders, including people, to get away from the nest.
I remember a time, as a young father, showing my young son a pair of yellow-crowned night-herons peering at us from a branch near a nest while squawking like crazy. His response? “Wow, they look like space aliens from ‘Star Trek.’ ”