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with Phyllis Yochem
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Tuesday, June 27, 2000
White, short-neck Cattle egrets roam, nest in pastures with livestock
Also: Black-crowned, yellow-crowned night-herons are distinguishable by their plumage colors and habitats
For the past two weeks I've been giving some tips on the sometimes-tricky process of identifying the herons and egrets that can be seen in the area. These include the great and little blue heron, tri-colored, and green heron, also great, reddish and snowy egret. All are members of the long-legged, long-necked heron family.
Cattle egrets
Cattle egret are also a common sight here. This species immigrated from the Old World by way of South America, arriving first in North America, in Florida, in the 1950s. Cattle egrets are all-white birds like snowy egrets. Their yellow legs are stockier and their necks shorter and thicker. In breeding, orange buff plumes appear on crown and nape.
Instead of living on the edges of bays and ponds, cattle egrets are likely to be seen in fields and pastures, often in the company of livestock. Their diet consists of insects, especially grasshoppers. This flocking species moves about the countryside together, and nests together. This last trait that has caused feelings of uneasiness in some people who feel there are too many noisy white birds landing in too close proximity to human habitations. Are they displacing any established North American species? It is believed that they are not.
Nocturnal herons
The other two species of heron seen in the Corpus Christi area are nocturnal, sleeping in daytime and feeding in the late evening and at night. Their name, night-heron, takes note of this aspect of their behavior. The more common of the two species, the black-crowned night-heron, is a year round resident. The other, the yellow-crowned night-heron, while present year round also, is much less easily found.
Both are large, stocky birds with black and white faces. For years I could not keep them separate, and often had to consult the field guide to identify them. The black crowned night-heron has a black back and crown. Its neck, plumes and belly are white. This is the bird that comes swooping from bushes or trees just after sundown, announcing his arrival with a guttural, croaking bark.
Where to find them
The yellow-crowned has a white crown and a large white dot on its black face behind the eye. Its call is less assertive, harsh, than that of the black-crowned. The immature of both species are large, brown, white spotted birds with greenish legs. The length of the leg is the best field mark for telling them apart. Those of the yellow-crowned are distinctly longer, especially in flight. The difficulty is in finding opportunities to compare them; young birds are seldom seen sitting side by side.
Look for black-crowned roosts in motts at Packery Channel County Park, around small ponds at the corner of Yorktown Blvd. and Roscher Road in Flour Bluff, at a pond on Whitely in Flour Bluff. They roost sometimes at Pollywog Pond and there is a known roost on Lamar Peninsula, on a street that begins at St. Charles Bay, in the vicinity of the big tree. In roosts of black-crowneds, look for the odd yellow-crowned.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi
resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.
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