Black-crowned Night Heron
The Black-crown Night Heron is hard to spot as it hides in the wetlands of North America. This heron has a summer range over most of the United States. Preferred habitats include swamps, streams, rivers, marshes, mud flats, and edges of lakes that have become overgrown.
Those big, beautiful red eyes are an adaptation that allows them to feed diurnally at dawn, dusk, and into the darkness. Diurnally means during the day rather than at night.
The bird is known to raise any chick in its nest.
Their chicks leave the nest before they can fly at four weeks. They learn to fly at six weeks.
The Black-crowned Night Heron can live up to 20 years of age.
