Black-crowned night heron
This is a black-crowned night heron, a bird which is mostly active at night and at dusk. It's probably why I had never seen one until now.

2020/09/19 – Black-crowned Night Heron

Today we have a couple of birds. The first one is a black-crowned Night-Heron, which, after reading about this bird, I realize I was very lucky to catch it. It is usually a nocturnal bird, and although one might see it at dusk, this was way too early. In fact I had never seen one before. It feeds on fish, frogs, insects, and, even small birds. As usual this bird took off as soon as I made one too many steps to get closer, but as you will see I took a couple of interesting pictures of that moment.
Our second bird is a brown-headed Cowbird.  Both individuals in this series are male since they both have a shiny black body and a brown head. The female by contrast has grey feathers, with subtle hints of brown on the head.
The female lay its eggs in other birds nests. The female will monitor the nest to make sure that the hosting bird will not push its eggs out of the nest. If this happens, the female might destroy the other bird’s eggs to dissuade it from doing that. Poor birds, life is hard already, and then you have to deal with parasites.
To close this series, I decided to share a flower which I deemed too beautiful to just keep to myself. However I was unable to identify it. If you have an idea what it might be, please, add a comment.

5 comments

    • Sansay says:

      Thanks Michael.
      Indeed, that flower close-up seemed just so amazing to me. It’s funny how sometimes you don’t realize what you have in your camera, until you open it on the big screen. At other times you expect something great only to discover some flaws that make the picture worthless.

  1. Nathalie says:

    Voilà tout est arrivé, l histoire du héron… pourrais tu mettre la traduction en français pour ta belle sœur préférée ha ha . Les photos me plaisent beaucoup. Tu n’a rien perdu en coup d ‘œil et en patience.

    • Sansay says:

      Salut, je viens de me rendre compte que je ne t’ai que répondu sur Facebook, ce qui n’est pas juste. Alors j’ajoute mon commentaire ici pour les lecteurs francophones qui s’y seraient égaré. J’aimerai bien faire la version française de mon site. Malheureusement cela me prendrai bien trop de temps. Je le ferai avec plaisir quand sonnera l’heure de la retraite. En attendant, désolé mais il va falloir réviser vos leçons d’anglais 😉
      À part ça, je suis bien content de savoir que mes photos te plaisent.

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