YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERONS.

July 2, 2015 at 7:16 PM · Science

YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERONS. On our walks, we are again encountering night heron nests on Bell Island. I posted on them here. We spoke with a man who has a nest in a tree right above his mailbox. He seemed on the whole to like having the birds, although he noted that the night herons are legally protected. He said they had come back to that tree for five years in a row (This post on the allaboutbirds site says that night herons can use a nest for several years, enlarging it each year). We know from talking to neighbors of his in past years that the night herons are quite loud. We commented on the guano on the ground, and he pointed to his mailbox, which was thickly encrusted with white. He had, he said, scrubbed the mailbox clean that morning.

2 comments

Annalisa July 11, 2015 at 12:39 AM

Imagine if night herons lived above your mailbox, Dad. Would you be scrubbing it off every morning or eagerly measuring with a ruler how thick the buildup was accumulating week by week? I would without a doubt bet on the latter.

Mary Jane Schaefer July 12, 2015 at 3:04 PM

The man we talked to seemed chagrined to me, as if he had liked the night herons
at first, but now wished they would give some other lucky person a turn to host them.
He mentioned that he had tried to frighten them away from their nest by shooting off
some kind of gun near their nest, not at them, but just to make them reluctant to
return. But, apparently, some of his neighbors did not approve of his discharging
firearms for any reason and called the police. So, now, he has to live with them.
I wonder WHY he hasn’t had his mailbox moved!