Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons nesting

One of our fantastic regular CAS Coastal Center at Milford Point volunteers, Rachele DeLorenzo, has one of Connecticut's more unique birds breeding in her neighborhood. The Yellow-crowned Night-Heron is a long-legged wader that is listed as a species of "Special Concern" on the Connecticut Endangered Species Act. They prefer to live in colonies that must be somewhat near a wet habitat whether it is tidal marsh, coastal areas or offshore islands, or even swamps, wetlands, or large inland bodies of water as they feed primarily on crustaceans.

As Rachele can attest they build large nests of sticks high up in trees with both male and female working together. This year birds returning to Connecticut often found previous nests completely obliterated by Hurricane Sandy. Their rebuilding process is ongoing. Rachele sent me these photos of their work and what her colony has been up to as they prepare for a hopefully successful breeding season.















Our thanks Rachele and best of luck to the state-listed birds.


Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician

Photos by Rachele DeLorenzo

2 comments:

  1. Today, we discovered a nesting pair in a tree at Division St/Oakdale Street near Anderson Avenue in Milford. They are building a nest high up in an oak (?) tree behind 28 Division St. They were very busy around 6:45pm on Saturday, May 4. We look forward to seeing their nest develop.

    Patty Pino and Stanley Mickett, 18 Oakdale Street
    pattypino@yahoo.com

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  2. That's great! Please monitor them as closely as you can this season and when the summer is over, hopefully with young having successfully fledged, send in a Natural Diversity Data Base report to CT DEEP. As they are a CT ESA bird CT DEEP would love to have the information on file forever which helps protect areas where our endangered birds nest. You can find the simple submission forms and more information here: http://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?a=2702&q=323460&deepNav_GID=1628

    Thanks for the report!

    Scott

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