One Yellow-crowned Night-Heron was busy selecting sticks for nest building.
It was a short hop across the boardwalk where I was standing to the rookery.
He was checking the route…
Finally he launched…
I couldn’t see where he landed–there were several pairs with robust looking nests and lots of single birds hanging around.
Cypress Wetlands, Port Royal, SC
March 29, 2024
The rookery area that the Yellow-crowned Night-Herons have chosen at Cypress Wetlands is dense, hanging with vines and Spanish Moss, and the trees are rapidly leafing out, impeding the view of those passing by.
So these action shots of a little territory set-to only features one of the players, the heron that was first on the limb.
The arriving heron remained blocked from my view…
and in the end, the interloper moved on.
Cypress Wetlands, Port Royal, SC
April 5, 2024
A Yellow-crowned Night-heron, just standing around at the edge of the swamp
Audubon Center at Beidler Forest, Harleyville, SC
March 19, 2023
Are you…
looking at me?
St. Augustine Alligator Farm, St. Augustine, FL
January 20, 2023
Another wooden trunk between some old rice fields, this one controls the flow of water from the canal in the foreground to the impoundment behind that dike. This set of trunks was replaced last year and only this side has the full pivoting door mechanism.
I knelt down to get the next image, where you can see open water in the impoundment on the other side. The grackle and the Tricolored Heron had moved on and the juvenile night heron took that opportunity to claim a post.
Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, SC
September 14, 2022
A Yellow-crowned Night-heron was hunting along the edge of a small pond, wading into the grass rather than the water.
Success!
I have no idea what the meal was.
It went down the hatch in one quick gulp.
May 22, 2021
Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, SC
On my return walk on an old rice field dike a juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-Heron was perched on another trunk, this time up on a cross bar amidst some spider webs.
The pressure-treated look of the wood and use of metal material indicate that is a newer, replacement trunk. Older ones are all wood, including the pegs that position the water control flap.
Management of these wetlands by the SC Department of Natural Resources is dependent on the functionality of these trunks for water level control.
Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, SC
July 4, 2021
A pair of juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-Herons had staked out one of the trunks along an old rice field dike to catch the early morning sun.
The dike is too narrow to sneak by; the one on the left flew off down the canal as I approached. This one followed soon after.
Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, SC
July 4, 2021
There were several Yellow-crowned Night-herons in the trees around the big pond at Magnolia Cemetery and a few were pulling on sticks.
The end of June seemed late for gathering nest material, but perhaps it was for a repair.
Or maybe they just liked to poke around in the trees.
There didn’t seem to be any urgency to the mission.
A couple of them were just watching–me as well as the other herons.
June 27, 2021
Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, SC
A fellow photographer pointed out this nest where he had seen three Yellow-crowned Night-heron chicks the day before. With the fuzzy head and how he was mostly laying down I’d guess a week or 10 days old.
After a bit the first chick and one nest-mate, rather camouflaged to the right in the twigs, stood up for a look around.
From a different angle a quarter of a way around the tree I spotted one chick. He looked older, but it’s hard to say for sure with the curtain of Spanish Moss.
If you zoom in you’ll see an eye of a second bird to the left of the standing bird, at nest-top level, just before the big clump of Spanish Moss.
Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, SC
June 27, 2021
