Bird of the Week 5/11 - 5/15

This week’s bird is the: Black-crowned Night Heron

1. This species’ scientific name is pretty great: Nycticorax nycticorax. The word “nycticorax” is loosely translated to “night crow” or “night raven.”

2. The Black-crowned Night Heron is found around the world, on every continent except Antarctica.

3. In contrast to this species insanely large range, its five cousin species in the genus Nycticorax are/were much more range restricted, four of which were restricted to single islands off of Africa.

4. Unfortunately, having such a small range is a big risk. During the colonial era, these four single-island cousins went extinct soon after they were discovered by early European explorers, almost certainly due to anthropogenic causes (introduced species, habitat degradation, etc.).

5. For the Black-crowned Night Heron, having a large range is a good insurance policy. Although having a private island is nice, when bad things happen (like humans), it doesn’t take much to snuff out a few million years of evolution.

6. In case you are worried, the Black-crowned Night Heron is doing great in most places (populations are stable), especially in North America after people stopped using DDT.

Have a great week!