A Tale of Two Plumages

The old adage is time flies for a busy person – and I’ll simply refine that a bit and state that it’s even faster when you are doing something you enjoy. Brad and I always joke that we are busier now than we were before we were retired…noting that the real difference is we aren’t tearing our hair out trying to find those evil spirits in the machine. That isn’t to say it is all stress free down here in south Texas. Some of the local birds prefer not to be seen, much less stare down the end of a large black barrel that goes clicky clicky (at least for us that haven’t made the leap to mirrorless). I am happy to report that after my rather slow start, things have really picked up as we make our way eastward from Big Bend National Park. The count sits at 200+2 which is better at this point than our previous “Average Year” attempts (link here). Ron was even able to make it down here last weekend to get his numbers jump started – he had to go back to zero degree (F) temperatures and that white fluffy stuff, ugh. We are currently at our 4th base camp which is on South Padre Island with the Mangrove Yellow Warbler on the menu. On two unsuccessful attempts so far, but plenty of days left to remedy that. Time to get to the real reason you are here, today’s featured feathered friend.

Based on the shot above, you might think that this is one of those birds mentioned earlier that prefers not to be seen – hit the jump and we’ll see if that is accurate.

The Yellow-Crowned Night Heron is a tale of two plumages. Their visibility can be greatly different dependent on their age. In their juvenile years, the YCNHs have a brown and grey dominated feathering that is laced with streaks of white. That color scheme provides them excellent cover in their preferred habitat – marsh reeds.

As you can see from the first shot, you could easily overlook them with a fast scan of the shoreline, especially when birding from the car while Linda tries to navigate traffic. Envision your favorite lap dog hanging out of the passenger window, ears pull back in the wind and its paws gripping a camera. I make no apologies for how I might look when in the throws of birding ha.

Fortunately, this juvenile decided to make it easier on me and flew to a perch on a nearby stick. When I saw it make that move I made Linda stop and let me out – just too good of a setting to pass up. In this position you can really tell the thick bill and that gorgeous blood-red eye. They will take on a completely different color pattern when they reach adulthood, but they will maintain that piercing eye that must be quite haunting for their prey.

In the juvi stage, the Yellow-Crowned can look very similar to the Black-Crowned Night Heron. They both have the same reed concealing color palette, but there are a couple of key distinctions you can use to distinguish them. The first two are relative characteristics and long-time readers of Intrigued already know my unfavorable opinion of those. They are fantastic when you have both specimens standing next to each other, less so when one isn’t in the picture. In this case, the Yellow-Crowned has very fine white streaking and spotting compared to the large tear-shaped spots of the Black-Crowned juvi. The other is my personal observation you may or may not agree with as I can’t find it officially stated anywhere. I feel that Yellow-Crowns have skinnier/smaller/rounder like heads compared to the chunkier heads of the Black-Crowned. Notice how this specimen has an almost egg shaped head where the Black-Crowned will be stockier. Again, best viewed when you have one sitting in the left hand and the other in your right hand.

Fortunately, there is a better tell that you can use in the field related to their bills. The Yellow-Crowned Night Herons have a basically all black bill. The Black-Crowned has a pale yellowish bill. Did you catch the potential confusion there? You might guess that the “Yellow”-Crowned would have the yellowish bill and the “Black”-Crowned would have the blackish coloring – if birding was easy, it probably wouldn’t be as much fun (that’s what we tell each other here at Intrigued). Some day I’ll make a post of all my birding rules, hints and acronyms we use in the field – for now, just remember Y!Y-B!B for the juvi Night Herons (for the non-programmers out there “!” is the “Not” operator.

To close out the post, let’s throw in the adulthood plumage. We were fortunate to see several juvenile and adult Yellow-Crowned Night Herons while we were exploring 8 Mile Rd on Galveston Island (with only a few funny looks from cars that passed us ha). The below specimen gives a good look at the feature it is named after, the yellow crown. It can look more white depending on the lighting – regardless, it stands in stark contrast to the black crown on the other species.

Just throwing this similar shot in as I was trying to figure out which of the two I liked better. I am leaning to the first with the plumes going up, but most of the time you see them it will be in the down position.

Will call it a post there folks. Hope you enjoyed learning about the juvenile phase of the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron. Keep your eyes sharp when scanning those shorelines!