Black-crowned Night-Heron
birdfotos.com
Black-crowned Night-Heron
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About 2 feet in length and a 4 foot wing span. A very stocky Heron with short legs.
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These are a very difficult bird to photograph while they are nesting.
They just don't want any humans around or even close to their nest area.
This means I get out the long tele-photo lenses, radio control devises, and the high speed film.
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Parent on the nest watching every move I made.
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A couple of hungry chicks.
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No more than 2 feet away was another nest with 2 chicks & one egg.
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This egg has started to hatch. If you look close you can see the 2 pecked holes in it.
I really don't know what is being said here, but I can ad-lib a bit.
The chick may be tell the new unhatched to not come out just yet or it might
get eaten by a predator standing near by.
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We have a visitor. As you see the egg has hatched.
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The visitor seems to be watching the newly hatched chick.
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Hummmmm, wonder what it's thinking.
As you can see it has moved much closer to the hatched egg.
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It has picked up one the young birds and is trying to swallow it.
I don't think it's going to happen.
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Red arrow is pointing the chick in its beak.
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What it did was to release the older chick it had in its beak
and then grabbed the newly hatched chick.
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Once again the red arrow is pointing to the newly hatched chick in its beak.
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As you can see it has all but swallowed the newly hatched chick.
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Top arrow is pointing to the part of the chick not yet consumed and the second lower arrow
is pointing the bulge in its throat as swallows the chick.
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The bulge in its throat has grown much larger.
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Red arrow once again is pointing to very large bulge in its
throat from swallowing that newly hatched chick.
This white bird is an immature Great White Egret I think.
Its beak was not black, I think that was caused by shadows.
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I'm gettin out-a-here.
Gettin eat by a Great White Egret ain't my way to go.
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The parent bird just sits and watches it happen
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