Black-Crowned Night-Herons

   I have subscribed to eBird needs alerts for over two years now, and they have been extremely helpful. Not only did they lead me to an nesting osprey pair not 30 minutes from my home, but now it will lead me on an adeventure to a nearby lake in search of black-crowned night-herons. And since the black-crowned night-heron is not one of the 128 species currently on my life list, I am eager to find one so that I can check it off my Ohio bird checklist (you can download the latest version of Birds of Ohio's free Ohio bird checklist by clicking here). But not only do I wish to check off one more species on the ol' life list, BCNH's are extremely elusive, and can be very difficult to see. I am hopin that I will be lucky enough to see one of them, and be able to check off a rather uncommon, to say the least, bird off of my list. For those of you who may not know what a BCNH looks like, a photo is posted below. The BCNH is very similar to the yellow-crowned night-heron.

Black-crowned night-heron*

   To find a location where black-crowned night-herons have been seen near you, use this interactive bird reports map from Cornell Lab by clicking here.

*Photo via wikimedia commons