Ayoung night-heron has been hanging out by the pond in the morning, perched in the trees by the water when the pond is full, presumably waiting for the tide to drop. The bird (I assume that I am seeing the same bird every morning) has the long neck and dark, thick bill, orange eye and long, yellow legs of a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron. This is a surprisingly tame bird and it lets me get quite close as it perches on a dead stump out in the open while I edge slowly down the trail; only at the last minute does it fly back into a big old Pitch Pine that offers more cover. There is no question about the ID of this bird but it does have the somewhat scraggly look of a juvenile and I do wonder if this could be a bird of the year. But June does seem very early for a newly-minted heron to be out on its own and night-herons keep their immature plumage well into their second year; so it is probably Class of 2011.
This is not the only heron around. The Great Egrets have increased in number and there are occasional Snowies to be seen. Most notable, I hear the calls of the Green Heron coming from the woods where it may have a nest. The loud calls are the familiar skee-yew alarms but the soft call, almost a coo, is very little known; it isn't mentioned in the guide books and I didn't even recognize it until last year when it took me a while to track it to its source. Nevertheless it is a persistent call, sometimes repeated for some time, and it is probably connected with mating and nesting activities. At least that's what I hope is going on.
The local appearance of mid-sized southern terns continues to be a subject of interest. These digiscoped pictures were taken by Eileen Schwinn on Friday at Cupsogue. One shows a Sandwich Tern (in non-breeding plumage) perched next to a larger Royal Tern (itself unusual this early in the season). The other, presumably of the same bird, nicely shows the yellow tip on the end of its longish narrow bill.
Eric Salzman
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