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About night herons with love. Common night heron The night heron bird is a duck

The common night heron, or night heron (lat. Nycticorax nycticorax) is a bird from the night heron family (Ardeidae) of the order Ciconiiformes. It is found in Europe, North Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Despite the fairly vast territories it occupies, it is extremely difficult to spot it in the wild. The bird leads a secretive lifestyle. All day long she hides among the dense branches of tall trees, and flies out to hunt only at nightfall. Particularly cautious night herons build nests at a height of more than 40 m above the ground.

Such caution is not unfounded. Distinguished by their extraordinary gluttony, these cute birds cause significant damage to fish farmers, for which they are subject to constant shooting. Fortunately, in most European countries this species is under state protection.

Behavior

The common night heron most often chooses wet, swampy lowlands. It is especially attracted to overgrown banks of rivers and ponds, small rivers and small streams, near which tall trees grow nearby, necessary for reliable shelter.

Birds living in the northern regions make annual migrations to the south, while those living in warmer climatic zones lead a sedentary lifestyle.

Night herons love to gather in loose flocks and often nest in large, noisy colonies, settling together with herons. During the day, they sleep peacefully in the thicket of branches, waking up only at dusk. Usually silent birds fly out to feed with loud characteristic cries, which is why they got their name.

The bird hunts in shallow water, walking sedately and leisurely along the shore and looking for prey in the water. Her eyes see perfectly in the dark, helping to find small fish, frogs, water insects and their larvae. She deftly catches fish by swimming in the water, and she can catch other living creatures by masterfully climbing reed stems.

Periodically, the night heron leaves quiet creeks and goes to the meadows, where it feasts on spiders, small rodents and birds. Often she, violating all the rules of hospitality and good neighborly relations, drags small chicks from the nests of other long-legged birds. If there is no food, it is able to travel considerable distances in search of food.

Reproduction

The nesting season begins in early spring. Having taken a convenient place in the crown of a tree, the male tirelessly defends it from annoying competitors. To give himself a more menacing appearance, he constantly stretches his neck, puffs up his feathers and, tilting his head, emits loud croaking cries.

Having chosen a worthy gentleman, the female begins to sort out his feathers.

The newlyweds affectionately pat each other with their beaks. After completing all the necessary mating ceremonies, the male begins building the nest with obvious pride. He builds the base, and then begins to bring the female small branches necessary for finishing work.

With rare exceptions, the nest is located near water in the crown of a tree or in a dense bush. Several dozen pairs can often nest on one large tree.

In the first half of June, the female lays 3 to 5 bluish-green eggs every 48 hours. Both spouses hatch the clutch alternately. The first chick is born after 3 weeks, and the rest of its brothers come into this world every 2 days. If there is a shortage of food, only the firstborn survives.

The hatched chicks are blind, covered with dark brown down flecked with cream.

Possessing an enviable appetite by nature, they scream uncontrollably, constantly demanding from their parents another portion of food, consisting mainly of small fish. At the age of 3 weeks, the chicks move from the nest to neighboring branches, using the offerings of their parents until they are one and a half months old. After this, they stand on the wing and become completely independent.

In the first year of life, the birds have brown plumage with cream speckles, which disappear the following year. In the third year of life, they become sexually mature and acquire adult coloration.

Description

The body length of common night herons reaches 60-65 cm. They weigh 500-700 g with a wingspan of 105-110 cm.

The back and nape are black. The wings and tail are bluish-gray. The ventral side, forehead, superciliary stripe and sides of the head are white. The head is quite large, set on a short muscular neck.

The irises of the large eyes are bright red. The massive pointed beak is painted black. The wide wings have a rounded shape. Males have two long snow-white decorative feathers on the back of their heads. Three fingers face forward and two back. The fingers end in tenacious dark claws.

The life expectancy of the common night heron in natural conditions does not exceed 16 years.

International scientific name

Nycticorax nycticorax (Linnaeus, )

Area

Nesting range All year round

Only in winter Security status

Taxonomy
on Wikispecies

Images
on Wikimedia Commons

ITIS
NCBI
EOL

general characteristics

The night heron has a short neck compared to other herons and a short, but strong and powerful beak. The legs are also shorter than those of other herons. The male in breeding plumage has a black cap with a greenish tint and a back of the same color. The wings are gray. The belly and sides are white. In the spring, 2-4 long narrow white feathers grow on the back of the head. The beak is black, the legs are yellow or pinkish with long toes. The female has a similar color. Young birds are dark brown with longitudinal streaks. Downy chicks are white.

young bird

Spreading

The common night heron inhabits almost all of America, Africa, Southern and Central Europe and Asia. European night herons are migratory and winter in Equatorial Africa. There is no common night heron only in Australia. In Russia, a large number of nesting night herons can be found in the Volga delta.

Lifestyle

Night herons are active mainly in the mornings and evenings; during the day they sit motionless on a branch. However, during nesting time they are also active during the day. They nest near densely overgrown bodies of water at the forest edge or in the forest.

Nutrition

Night herons feed mainly on fish and frogs, as well as aquatic insects.

Voice

Reproduction

Nycticorax nycticorax

Night herons nest in colonies with other herons or their own colonies of up to a thousand pairs in trees or bushes. If the nesting site is far from human habitation, they can also nest on reed creases. The night heron builds a nest from small twigs, where the female lays 3-4 eggs. After 21 days, the chicks hatch, usually 1-2 days apart, in the order in which the eggs were laid. Both parents feed the chicks, first regurgitating semi-digested food into their beaks. Later, when the chicks grow up, they begin to be fed regular food.

Notes

Literature

Beycek V., Stastny K. Birds. Illustrated Encyclopedia M.: Labyrinth-press 2004
Ganzak J. Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds Prague: Artia 1990
Life of Animals T.6 Birds M.: Education 1986

What can I say, there are a lot of night herons living here now. They know how to take care of themselves. At any water source, natural or artificial, if there is fish in the water, night herons stand like sentinels and hunt. We've photographed them so much already that my husband now refuses to point the camera at them. And I loved them and still love them. Therefore, I decided to write about them in some detail, fortunately I found interesting materials, and there are countless photographs in the archive :)

Common night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax אנפת לילה)

Night herons have a stocky figure, unlike any other heron.

There is no grace or subtlety of the heron at all :) There is no such characteristic disproportionately, I would say, tragically long neck :). There is almost no neck at all :) At the same time, she has her own unusually beautiful heron plasticity. Some of her poses resemble medieval engravings :)

The top of the head and shoulder feathers are black with a bluish metallic tint. The forehead, superciliary stripe, and the ventral side of the body are white. The wings, loin and tail are grey. The beak is black, the iris is red. Wing length 26-30 cm. Birds weight from 550 to 800g.

Night herons usually have yellow legs; during the mating and nesting seasons they are red, and the bird also has long, narrow, decorative white feathers on its head. Yellow legs can also have feathers :) As for feathers, I don’t even know what to say - we hardly see night herons without these feathers. So it’s difficult to understand when their mating season begins and ends.

The white feathers on the head are an additional reason why many people love the night heron, and if you add red eyes, which have something demonic in them, all this makes it even more interesting.

About feathers that almost led to the destruction of the species.
The beautiful decorative feathers on the head of the night heron, as well as the aigrette of the little egret, were the reason for the almost complete destruction of these birds in Western Europe in the first half of the 20th century. It was fashionable to decorate women's and men's hats with these feathers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The last Chinese emperor. Photo Wikipedia. Notice his hat with a plume of feathers very similar to the white feathers of night herons. How many birds must be killed for one such plume, if one night heron can have a maximum of 4 such feathers?
Many birds were killed for the sake of fashion. Mass hunting for these feathers stopped only with a change in fashion.

A little history...

In his book written at the end of the 19th century, Henry Baker Tristram writes about night herons in our area: “The night heron is found in small numbers, never seen flocks. Found in the area and in the Ginosar valley.”
So why are so many night herons now seen in Israel? There are statistics dating back to the 50s of the last century.
In 1954, night herons began nesting in the Valley of the Springs (עמק המעיינות).
In 1959, nests of night herons, little egrets and yellow herons were discovered on the banks of the Alexander River. The appearance of these three species in Israel is apparently associated with the irrigation and drying of the Antiochus swamps in southwestern Turkey in the 50s of the last century. The main food of these three species is fish. Industrial fish ponds, which were available in large numbers in Israel at the same time, turned out to be an excellent replacement for the dried-up swamp. The development of fisheries throughout Israel is helping the species to thrive.

Who can you see in Israel?

In Israel, there are three types of night herons: the resident population, migratory birds, and summer night herons, most of which nest in the area of fish ponds north of Hedera. Some sources also talk about wintering night herons.
Migratory night herons visit us in the fall, in September-October, when European night herons fly to Africa for the winter. In spring, from mid-March to early May, returning flocks can be seen. Since the 1980s, there have been more than 2,000 nests in Israel. Often these nesting herons live with us permanently, some of them arriving in the summer to nest.

The night heron always has a good appetite; in other words, it is gluttonous.
Trying to justify the “nocturnal” part of its Latin name, the night heron sleeps during the day in night heron roosting areas and hunts at night. Immediately after sunset, with loud cries, the birds begin their flight towards feeding places: fish ponds, irrigated fields, puddles, river banks, etc. During the nesting season, night herons are very active during the day.
Their food is: fish, crayfish, frogs, lizards, turtles, small rodents, eggs and chicks of other species, mole crickets, dragonflies, songbirds, bats. The night heron always has a good appetite; it is very gluttonous.
For catching fish, the night heron has several systems: “standing”, standing motionless, without moving, waiting for the fish to approach. “Slow motion”, moves slowly so as not to spook the fish. “In flight” flies over the water, freezes in the air and dives for fish. "Shadow Image": opens the wings and walks so that the wings create a shadow over the water to attract fish that want to hide.
It has been noticed that night herons can also catch fish with bait. They throw bread into the water and grab the fish that come to eat the bread. Here is a short video without text about how she does it. Notice how she breaks the bread into smaller pieces and how she does not try to catch fish that are too large for her. This is not an Israeli video, although it seemed to me that a similar one was filmed here.
Usually she catches small fish, up to 60g, which she swallows whole. The night heron can swallow fish weighing up to 120 grams, a quarter of its own weight. If a night heron catches a fish with a large weight, then it is obvious that this is a sick and weak fish and someone needs to remove it from the company of other fish.

Honestly, it always seems to me that these fish, which are caught by night herons, are quite worthy candidates for festive gefiltefish, weighing at least 500 grams... but this is not realistic when the bird itself weighs from 550 grams :)

Now, in order to eat the fish, you need to boil it and turn your head into the stomach :) Otherwise it won’t go in.

Turns the night heron fish with a slight toss

The final swallowing is accompanied by a not very aesthetic stretching of the neck, which suddenly appears in the night heron :) for a short time the fish is right in the neck and it is thanks to this that we see the neck :)

Night herons mainly fish in industrial fish ponds and are considered agricultural pests. Pond owners try to drive night herons away from their ponds in every possible way. Despite their small size, night herons cause significant damage to farms. Fisheries try to drive away night herons using humane methods: scarecrows, nets and ropes over ponds to prevent the birds from catching fish. The heron knows how to think. There is little that can stop her... But I saw one nesting colony on the territory of the fishery, which was set on fire. Of course, the birds left her.

This is my photo from the opening. A couple of lower photos on the topic of birds dying at the hands of humans. While a piebald kingfisher on the left is entangled in a net, a night heron on the right appears to be diving into the water after a fish. But actually it is not. The night heron, like the kingfisher, became entangled in the net, but the photographer simply did not show this net. Next to this photo of a night heron hangs a sign with a very long story about how the photographer tried to save a night heron at a fish pond, but the caretaker there wouldn’t let him because. the mesh could be damaged in this case. After leaving the bird to die, the photographer began to reflect on the bird's last day...
But, I repeat once again, night herons are smart birds and only a few die, while the majority thrive and successfully cause damage to the fishery industry...

Night herons like to hunt in small groups...

...in large groups, tens, hundreds of birds together. In contrast, during migration, night herons prefer to fly alone or in small groups.
We have never seen hundreds of birds hunting together, but groups like those in this photo are very attractive to...

... hunters, bird photographers.

About family life.

In recent years, the number of night herons has increased significantly and they can be found in almost any breeding colony, along with other species such as Egyptian herons and little egrets. Night herons can hatch chicks twice in a year.
If in the past night herons nested mainly in the north, today they can be found in many parks in the center of the country.

These three species nest together, forming mixed colonies with other species, Egyptian herons and little egrets. They are clearly visible in the photograph. In such colonies we also saw loon deer and Egyptian herons. There are such colonies throughout the country from the north to Safari in Ramat Gan in the south.

Building a nest is not an easy task...

...and not easy, the branches are very heavy...

Just some kind of dove of peace, but in reality it’s a night heron :)

The nest is built from plant materials, the diameter of the nest is about 45 centimeters. Nesting occurs in breeding colonies starting in March. Nests are built in trees at a height of up to 50 meters.

Some are already sitting in the nest, while others are engaged in courtship.

The female lays 3-5 bright turquoise eggs.

After 24-26 days, the chicks hatch, usually 1-2 days apart, in the order in which the eggs were laid. Here on the left is an Egyptian heron chick, they all nest together, on each other’s heads in terrible crowded conditions. The night heron chick is brown, spotted, and looks like a small dinosaur:) The chicks hatch with their eyes open and covered in down.

After 10 days, the chicks crawl out of the nest and hide among the branches. When the parents arrive to feed the chicks, they call the chicks in a ritual manner that involves turning the white long and nape feathers. Otherwise, they will be attacked by the chicks, who attack everything alien. Both parents feed the chicks, first regurgitating semi-digested food into their beaks. Later, when the chicks grow up, they begin to be fed regular food.
Please note that the red legs, complete with white feathers, are specifically visible here.

Already at 2 months, the chicks are able to fly. Despite the excellent flight capabilities at such an early age, the chicks return to spend the night in the nest with their parents during the first time of their independence.

Until the age of three, the birds look completely different; they are brown with white spots.

Some interesting things about night herons:
In Latin, the night heron is called Nycticorax nycticorax, where Corax is the raven and Nuctus is the night, the sounds made by the bird were believed to be similar to those of a crow. And in Russian their voices sound like a peculiar “kwak, kwak, kwak”, repeated intermittently. Thanks to this kva, the Russian name for the bird appeared. In general, their voices are amazing:) Calming, cooing and everything on the theme of kwa:) I didn’t hear anything about the crows:) These are noisy birds, especially during nesting.
References to the bird's nocturnal life appear in several languages, Hebrew, English and German. This indicated its difference from other herons.
The heron is mentioned in the Torah as a bird that is forbidden to eat. "The stork and all kinds of herons..." (דברים י"ד, 18)
Greek mythology tells us that in the beginning all birds ate the same food. And suddenly the herons discovered the ability to find food in the water. They boasted about their capabilities and the fact that they could swim better than Poseidon, the god of the seas. As a result, they were punished and lost the ability to swim. Now they are forced to fish while standing patiently on the shore.
The longest lifespan of a night heron in nature is 21 years. This information is obtained using ringing.
Nycticorax nycticorax has 4 subspecies:
N.n. nycticorax Distributed in Africa, Europe and Asia
N.n. hoactli North America to Central America
N.n. obscures Central America to Tierra del Fuego
N.n. falklandicus Enlemik Falkland Islands
The night heron is a common bird. Breeds on all continents except Australia and Antarctica, preferring hot and tropical areas.
The world population of night herons is stable in size, but the exact number of birds is unknown.
The expansion of agricultural areas, mainly fish ponds, as well as parks and pine groves, has made it possible to increase the number of nesting birds.

A real city heron.

It turns out that in the very urban center of the most urban city in Israel, in Tel Aviv on the Rabin Square of the Kings of Israel, a new feathered resident has appeared in an ecologically clean pool - the night heron. In the summer of 2012, this was officially written about in the newspaper :) This pool appeared not too long ago, but goldfish live in it, a lot of water and plants. Local residents and employees of the Tel Aviv City Hall, which is located very close, reacted with great interest and understanding to the bird, which decided that this was a convenient place for hunting. The goldfish may be small, but there is no competition. The heron is not bothered by street noise or a lot of people passing by. As soon as the birds see that the noise does not interfere with their hunting and daily life, they don’t give a damn about it and stop noticing it. I saw large nesting colonies almost right on the railway and on the intercity highway.
The creators of the ecological pool consider it a good sign that the night heron comes to hunt in this pond. And they promise that if there is not enough fish in the pond, they will add more. The birds are an additional attraction and demonstrate the environmental friendliness of the pond, which attracts wild night herons. The fish in the pond live well and reproduce quickly. In addition to the night heron, the white-breasted kingfisher also flies to this pond, as I understand from the information on the network.
about necklace parrotshttp://dona-anna.dreamwidth.org/

Field signs. More often green night heron It is possible to observe it taking off from the shore or flying low over the river. Its size during flight approaches the size of a yellow heron or is somewhat smaller. It flies quite quickly, often flaps its wings and does not retract its neck so much. Sitting on the shore and seeing a person or boat approaching, it first freezes, stretching out its neck, and then moves a short distance along the shore. The heron again lands on the shallows under the steep bank on a root sticking out of the water, on an overturned boat, on the lower or middle dry branch of a tree growing on the shore, but does not land on the tops of the trees. At the same time, the bird rarely rises higher than the trees growing on the banks and, as a rule, flies 15-20 meters above the water surface.

Usually it doesn’t run across the ground, and you can probably pick it up where it landed. However, wounded in the wing, she runs with remarkable agility. In relation to humans, the green night heron behaves differently, depending on the circumstances, but is generally less careful than large species of herons. The bird's voice can be heard quite often during a calm flight or during takeoff. According to Menzbier (1916), it is similar to a short, dull croak, which is certainly wrong. Shulpin (1936) conveys it with the sound “tsik-tsik-tsik”, which is also difficult to agree with. The bird's voice is high and sharp, it sounds like a sharp "tilk" or more often "tiuu". The bird is crepuscular, lives alone and in pairs, and lives in dense bushes along the banks of water bodies.

Area. Extremely extensive. The birds inhabit temperate, but mainly subtropical and tropical countries in Asia, Africa, America and Australia.

Nature of stay. A sedentary species in southern latitudes and migratory in the northernmost parts of its range. Correct flights are characteristic of birds inhabiting Japan, North. China, Korea and the USSR.

Biotope. The green night heron adheres to thickets along the banks of inland water bodies.

Subspecies and varying characters. The night heron has many subspecies. Some of them differ slightly, others, on the contrary, differ well in size, plumage color and biological details.

Biotope. Shady coastal growths of vines, alder, bird cherry and other tree species framing rivers. Birds are especially willing to choose the coastal thickets of river backwaters, heavily littered channels among numerous islands, where snags are found in abundance, trees washed away by water with exposed root systems, and forest brought here during high water and rafted down the river. Green night herons adhere to these stations with great constancy. Here, sitting on roots exposed by water, on a snag or on a narrow shallow under a steep bank in fast-flowing water, it obtains food for itself.

During the period when the chicks are growing, these herons occasionally fly outside the coastal thickets, visiting ditches and the banks of ponds among villages located in close proximity to rivers. It is not found in swamps and stagnant bodies of water far from rivers. In such stations, herons live in separate pairs, and later in families, never forming colonial nests in our country. In contrast, in Japan, the Amur green heron nests not only in individual pairs, but also in colonies of 3 to 10 pairs each (Yan, 1942). On rivers flowing from the Sikhote-Alin ridge, it lives in the lower sections with a wide river valley and almost never enters the mountains. In the middle and southern parts of the country (for example, Iman), it often penetrates into mountain valleys.

Number. On the Amur, the green night heron is not numerous. To the south, the number increases noticeably and on Ussuri the heron is found very often, and the more often the further you go to the south. Most often found on Sungach. Rare along the lower Lef in the Spassk-Yakovlevsk area. In the lower reaches of the Iman, from 1 to 3 pairs nest along one kilometer along the river. In general, it is a fairly numerous bird in its characteristic habitats, which it populates quite densely.

Reproduction. Nests are always made in trees (willow, apple, alder), sometimes hanging over the water surface, sometimes growing to the side up to 30-35 meters from the shore. Nesting buildings are located at different heights from the ground or water. When the nest is built above the water, it can be placed very low (about 1.5-2 m above the water), more often slightly higher, occasionally at a height of 10-12 m. In most cases, the nests are difficult to access. They are placed either on thin, crisscrossing vines that cannot support the weight of a person, or on the end of an apple tree branch, far from the trunk.

The shape and arrangement of the nest material are similar to the nests of other herons that nest in trees. Their shape is an inverted cone, sometimes with very steep walls, sometimes on the contrary, with flat walls. Some of the thin branches radiate out from the top of the cone, where they are held together by a small amount of clay or bird droppings. The building is loose; eggs are visible through the walls on the sides and below. The sizes of nests vary significantly. In some cases they are no larger than the nests of a turtle dove ( Streptopelia orientalis), in others much more. The nest found on Suifun had a diameter of 28 cm, with a tray depth of 6 cm (Shulpin, 1936). The nests we examined on Iman turned out to be much smaller. The largest of them had a transverse diameter of 19 cm. In a small tray of the nest, the side eggs with a large clutch lay slightly higher than the central ones. The few nests known to us contained clutches of 3 to 5 eggs. The completed clutches, judging by the autopsies of nesting birds, apparently can contain 7 or even 8 eggs.

The timing of reproduction remains poorly understood. On Iman, the earliest unfinished clutch of 5 eggs was found on May 23. Considering that the bird lays the first 3 eggs daily, and the rest at large intervals, we can assume that the laying began on May 16. We also examined nests with fresh eggs much later (before June 11). On Suifun, a nest of 5 completely fresh eggs was found by Shulpin on June 4. The eggs have a shell - a pale blue color, like a night heron. Their shape varies greatly. Some of them are regular ovoid in shape, others are very elongated with equally rounded ends. They are smaller than the eggs of the night heron, little egret, and Egyptian heron, but somewhat larger than the yellow heron. The length of eggs from Iman and Sui-fung (26) is 37.4-43.0 mm x 29.0-31.1 mm, average 40.9 x 30.4 mm.

Incubation begins after the first egg is laid. On the first eggs laid, the bird sits a little and the size of the embryos and chicks of one nest differs little. The participation of sexes in incubation is not known. Females were found on the nests, but males stayed nearby. The female sitting on the nest allows the man to get very close. Rising from the eggs, stretching out her neck and beak, she freezes in a pose typical of some herons and flies off only when the observer shakes the branches of the nesting tree. Scared away from the nest, it relatively soon returns to the hatched eggs, but for a long time does not fly up to the nest, the laying of which is not yet completed. The timing of incubation of eggs in green night herons is not clear. Apparently, like most herons, the chicks quickly acquire the ability to climb and fly. On the river A young flying specimen was obtained by Przhevalsky on July 12, and from mid-July he came across young specimens quite often (Shulpin, 1936).

The night heron chicks that have flown out of the nests, together with the old ones, continue to adhere to the nesting areas for a long time. On Iman, an old female and her three flying chicks were caught near an empty nest in the period from August 24 to 29. Thus, the family remained in the nesting area essentially until the time of departure. Perhaps the flight itself occurs in families, and not in flocks, and therefore it can be difficult to notice. The main responsibility for feeding the chicks lies with the male.
At the end of June, males flying for food can often be seen not only at dusk, but throughout the whole day.

general characteristics

Spreading