Yellow-crowned Night Heron

This juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron was a pleasant surprise.  I was bird watching along the Susquehanna River, and when I turned back to the car I found the heron perched on the hood, right in front of the driver’s seat.  Yellow-crowned Night Herons tend to be fairly approachable, so I was able to take several photographs before it flew away to land on the banks of the river.

Yellow-crowned Night Herons are uncommon in Pennsylvania.  They are primarily a tropical species that are found mostly in coastal areas in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean Sea.  They can also be found year-round in southern Florida and along parts of the Gulf Coast.  During the nesting season, they migrate north along the Atlantic Coast, with small numbers nesting far from the ocean.  A single nesting colony is active in Pennsylvania, high in the trees above a residential area in northern Harrisburg.  That colony was right across the river from the heron that visited me.

A closely related species called the Black-crowned Night Heron nests in two separate colonies in our state, one in York and the other in Ephrata.  The adult Yellow-crowned Night Heron photographed here was actually taken with the Black-crowns in Ephrata, as if it was visiting its cousins.  The change in color from juvenile to adult feathers is dramatic, from brown stripes to a beautiful pattern of gray, black, white, and yellow.

Despite their name, Yellow-crowned Night Herons are active both day and night.  They eat many small animals, like frogs and fish, but they specialize in catching and eating crabs.  For crabs with large claws, they pick up the crab by the claw and vigorously shake the crab until its arm is torn off.  The juvenile heron that landed on my car left a regurgitate pellet (undigestible parts of their prey are regurgitated, just like owls do with the fur and bones of their prey).  The pellet seemed to be mostly composed of the exoskeletons of crayfish.