This week for Flora and Fauna Friday there’s a hunter in the dark, a wader in the shadows, the Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax).
As the cloak of twilight settles on the Lowcountry, the diurnal din dwindles with the dissolving glow of day. A croak, like stone on rock, a sudden nasal squawk, half rally cry – half shock, pierces the veil with the fear of the dark. It echoes from above, resonating in the lower spine, rising and shaking loose the frigid frisson of hairs on end as you stand frozen in silence, now beyond the threshold of the night. Terror thaws under warming recollection. ‘Twas merely a Night Heron, plunging excitedly into the darkness of an inverted dawn, in anticipation of the hunt.
The Black-crowned Night Heron is one of two Night Heron species found in South Carolina. The other being the Yellow-crowned Night Heron (Nyctanassa violacea), a more seasonal and scarce species that visits our coast in summer. The Black-crowned Night Heron calls our coastline and Sea Islands home year-round. They’re a wide-ranging species found across the tropics and temperate regions of the globe. Looking at the species in local context, they’re a stockier and shorter build than most of our other Herons and Egrets, a middling size by comparison but with and uncharacteristically short neck. They’re a shape and profile unlike any of our other waders. That uniqueness is further distinguished by their plumage. The Black-crowned Night Heron’s back and cap are a bluish slate-black, their wings smoky-gray, and their belly and throat pearl-white. From below all is upheld on golden legs, out in front juts a dark dagger of a bill, and peering out from the dividing line between a sky of black and a sea of white hovers in the horizon an imposing crimson eye. Like a setting sun pushing the blinding day away from the cloak of darkness. Juvenile birds are more subtly colored with the browns of weathered, fallen leaves plowed and peppered with bone-white in a blend made for blending in, and the only color expressed being a smoldering orange eye.
Black-crowned Night Herons, despite being common birds, are often hard to find. That’s owed to their nocturnal nature. Most wading birds forage throughout the day and huddle together in treetops for safety throughout the night. But Night Herons work the graveyard shift and so do the reverse. At the shuttering of dusk, they rouse and scatter across the landscape of the Lowcountry, squawking with rejoice as they commute. They’ll settle onto a bank of a wetland, pond, or creek and fish the night away below the illumination of starlight. They’re not picky eaters either, and will eat most anything they can catch and swallow. As dawn looms over the horizon, Black-crowned Night Herons return to their rooks. This is where you’re most likely to spot them. Overhead in a hedge or thicket overhanging a pond or marsh in a secluded corner, they hunker down in numbers to sleep the day away.
