Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

The Yellow-crowned Night-Heron is pretty different from other Herons when it comes to appearance. These birds are not as slender as typical Herons and rather their gray-purple plumage, sharp black and white face with yellow plumes make them look way more elegant than any other species of Herons.

About Yellow-crowned Night-Herons

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons are actually one of the oldest surviving species of Herons in the world. These birds have appeared several times in the fossil records and are recorded to be 2-2.5 million years old species which makes these birds even more interesting to study.

These Herons aren’t particularly day birds or night birds. They can forage both during the night and the day as they can see well in the dark. In coastal areas, these birds forage 3 hours before and after the high tide as high tides can trump at the day times and the deep waters make it more difficult to forage for small aquatic animals.

2 million years old, these extremely elegant birds with their unique plumage color scheme are fairly interesting. Aren’t they? So let’s learn more about them.

● Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Photos, color pattern, song
● Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Size, eating behavior, habitat
● Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Range and migration, nesting

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Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Color Pattern

The color pattern for Yellow-crowned Night-Herons is particularly very interesting. Unlike other Herons, these birds have a very atypical and interesting color scheme that makes them look elegant.

The adults of these birds are gray in color with a light and subtle tone of violet/purple. The faces of these birds have a very bold scheme of colors. They have a black face with large white cheeks, a slightly yellow crown, and head plumes. The yellowish crown is the reason that these birds are named Yellow-crowned Night-Heron while the head plumes
make these Herons look royal and elegant.

In the youngsters, the color is brown with fine white spots on the back and wings. Their under parts are streaky. The legs of these birds are orange-ish yellow which can be brighter in adults than the juveniles.

Description and Identification

The adult birds are stocky and compact-bodied with a blockhead and a medium-long neck. These Herons have legs that are not as long as other Herons. The adults also have a bold black and white face with a yellowish crown that can be hard to see because of poor light conditions. The plumage is gray-purple with a solid gray underbelly. The bills are
thick and dark.

Juveniles are pretty different than adults. The color of the juveniles is more on the brown scale than gray. They are also very streaky unlike the adults and have heavily streaked bellied and spotted back and wings. The juveniles also have a face similar to the adults but paler which develops to be more prominent with the age. These youngsters also lack the elegant head plume that the adults show off very often.

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons can also be identified by the way they fly with their necks tucked into the body which is uncommon for many other Heron species that fly with the neck stretched.

These birds can be easily identified apart from similar species including Black-crowned Night-Herons with their black crowns unlike the yellow crowns of these birds and Green Herons with their color scheme that resembles a paler version of Kingfishers.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Song

Herons cannot sing as they are not songbirds. However, like many species, Yellow-crowned Night-Herons make a few kinds of calls and sounds to communicate with each other and threaten invaders.

The calls of these birds include a harsh squawk that may be single or be repeated a few times during a second of time. They give out calls usually when disturbed or to communicate during breeding seasons.

Both the male and female clap their bills to produce a clucking sound near the nest before the laying of eggs. They also produce sounds by flapping their wings during courtship that sound “womp-womp” because of exaggerated wing beats.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Size

These birds are fairly small-sized Herons. Their relative size is larger than a Cattle Egret but smaller and stockier than a Great Egret. In size, these birds are somewhere between a Crow and a Goose.

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons measure up to 21.6-27.6 in (55-70 cm) and weigh around 22.9-28.2 oz (650-800 g) with relatively larger and wider wings.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Behavior

These birds stalk their prey in or near shallow water, usually alone. While stalking prey their posture is usually hunched and leaning forward. They perch quietly on stumps and tree branches, often over water. They usually fly with slow-paced wing beats.

Courting male Yellow-crowned Night-Herons slowly raise and then quickly retract their heads while fanning their long shoulder plumes while the females sometimes reciprocate. They form socially monogamous pairs and maintain their bond year to year. These birds are highly social and nest in colonies near other pairs but defend their nest territory. Both adults and the young ones defend their own nest snapping and jabbing their bills while squawking to shoo away the intruders.

The elder young ones compete with the younger hatchlings and may even push them off the nests. They may even mercilessly peck and trample their younger siblings.

What do Yellow-crowned Night-Herons Eat?

These birds have a primary diet of crustaceans. They forage for and eat crabs and crayfish. The diet mainly includes freshwater and saline crabs such as marsh crabs and fiddler crabs. They also eat ghost crabs, mole crabs, mud crabs, blue crabs, lady crabs, green crabs, rock crabs, and toad crabs. In inland areas, they feed almost exclusively on crayfish. They also eat smaller amounts of earthworms, leeches, marine worms, centipedes, snails, mussels, insects, scorpions, frogs, tadpoles, marine fish, freshwater fish, small snakes, turtles, young birds, and small mammals. 

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons forage in shallow waters. Standing still or walking slowly, they forage within several feet of the water’s edge. While foraging, these birds keep a distance of up to 15 feet from each other.

When they have prey in the striking range, they catch it with their bill and tend to swallow the smaller animals. They catch the bigger crabs from the leg or pincher and shake them to tear them apart. After that, these birds either swallow the pieces whole or use their bills to break open the shell further more. These birds may impale the crabs to paralyze them so that the handling becomes easier.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Habitat

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons are primarily found near wetlands of the southeastern area of the United States; foraging and breeding. Although found abundantly on the southern Atlantic Coast, they are regularly found inland as far north as Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and sometimes appear in Michigan and Ontario. These birds, having a major crustacean diet, are found more in the regions abundant with crabs and crayfish.

Their breeding habitat includes barrier islands, coastal lowlands, inland lowlands, forests with open understories, mangroves, and edges of lagoons while in coastal areas they forage along the edges of tidal marshes, tide pools, calm beaches, and lagoons. In the islands of the far North, they forage along shallow creeks, rivers, ponds, lakes, and swamps. You can occasionally spot them on lawns, plowed fields, and other upland sites.

Range and Migration

The range of Yellow-crowned Night-Herons includes mainly Coastal states. It also includes some parts of the islands far in the North. The southeastern coast of the United stated including the southern Atlantic coast is the main range for breeding and foraging while the inland range includes the states of Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Ontario.

During the winters, the birds may migrate majorly towards the southern breeding grounds of the U.S. range. Some of them are permanent residents of the state of Florida but most of them withdraw from the northern regions during the winters thus making these birds uncommon in the U.S. during the winters than summers. Some of the birds may even
migrate far southwards as Panama and the Lesser Antilles. During summers, these birds reverse migrate to the north. Some of the birds may wander off to far northern islands and the strays from Mexico reach the southwestern United States.

After breeding seasons, the young birds often disperse to the north or west before heading to the wintering grounds.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Lifecycle

These marvelous birds can live up to a great 20 years in the wild. The immature juveniles may take 3-4 years before attaining adulthood and developing the adult plumage and that is when they start actually breeding.

The males and females in the pairs build the nests together as a practice of bonding. The female lays a clutch of 2-6 eggs that are pale bluish-green in color. The eggs measure 1.8-2.2 in (4.6-5.7 cm) in length and 1.2-1.5 in (3-3.7 cm) in width. The incubation duty is split by the pair and the hatching happens after 20-25days.

The hatchlings are helpless and usually covered in white or pale gray down. Their eyes open after 1 day of hatching. The nestling period for these little ones is 30-43 days and the brood number is usually 1 per breeding season.

Nesting

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons nest in large trees, much above the ground/water surface. They select tall trees like oak and pine as high as 60 feet. They also nest in lower vegetation like mulberry, myrtle, hackberry, and mangrove. On islands with very limited vegetation, they nest on rocky ledges. The male chooses the nesting site and then both the members of the pair build a nest together as a bonding practice. They may build several nests before actually completing one. These birds nest in close-knitted colonies with birds from their own species or even other kinds of Herons or sometimes in isolated places as well.

The nest, a platform of sticks with a slight hollow in the center, can measure more than 4 feet across. Initially, the male brings the nesting material to the female but later they both gather more material together and build the nest. They mainly find twigs for the nests and they either strip the shrubs and trees of twigs or steal them from other nests. These nests are sometimes lines with leaves, vines, and Spanish moss. The building process averages about 10 days. Night-herons may reuse nests, adding to them each year, or refurbish vacant ones.

Anatomy of a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons are fairly small in size. These herons have a compact and stocky body with a short thick neck and long slender legs. They have a large blocky head with a very thick but short bill. During flights they keep their neck stuffed in and their wings look wide and rounded.

The slender legs help in foraging through fresh and brackish waters. However, the relative shortness of their legs forbids them from going into much deeper water and thus they forage for crustaceans in shallow waters. The thick and short bill only contributes to the strength and stability it which helps them in handling crabs and breaking their exoskeletons.

Final Thoughts

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons have survived 2.5 million years and continue to survive still. Despite their elegant looks, these birds are far from being fragile. They are rather pretty resilient and rogue. Thus, the success of survival, the rate of breeding, and the adaptive nature of these birds have helped them maintain a healthy population and make it to the category of low concern species.

However, they are still pretty vulnerable to habitat loss or degradation like other wetland birds. Historically, Yellow-crowned Night-Herons were hunted as food or for their plumes. Thus they are now protected in some states near the edge of their range.

Ornithology

Bird Watching Academy & Camp Subscription Boxes

At Bird Watching Academy & Camp we help kids, youth, and adults get excited and involved in bird watching. We have several monthly subscription boxes that you can subscribe to. Our monthly subscription boxes help kids, youth, and adults learn about birds, bird watching, and bird conservation.

Bird Watching Binoculars for Identifying Yellow-crowned Night-Herons

The most common types of bird watching binoculars for viewing Yellow-crowned Night-Heron are 8×21 binoculars and 10×42 binoculars. Bird Watching Academy & Camp sells really nice 8×21 binoculars and 10×42 binoculars. You can view and purchase them here.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Iron On Patches

Kids, Youth, and Adults love to collect our Bird Watching Academy & Camp iron-on patches. Our bird-watching patches help you keep track of the birds you have seen and identified. You can also display the patches on our Bird Watching Academy & Camp banners.

The Yellow-crowned Night-Heron is a great iron-on patch to start your collection with. The patches are durable and can be sewn on or ironed on to just about anything.

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron Stickers

Stickers are a great way for you to display your love for bird watching and the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron. We sell a monthly subscription sticker pack. The sticker packs have 12 bird stickers. These sticker packs will help your kids learn new birds every month.

Bird Feeders For Yellow-crowned Night-Herons

There are many types of bird feeders. Here are our favorite bird feeders for your backyard. We use all of these bird feeders currently. Kids will have a great time watching birds eat at these bird feeders. Using this collection of bird feeders will provide a wide variety and many types of birds.

Best Bird Houses For Yellow-crowned Night-Herons

There are many types of bird houses. Building a bird house is always fun but can be frustrating. Getting a bird house for kids to watch birds grow is always fun. If you spend a little extra money on bird houses, it will be well worth every penny and they’ll look great.