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The sight of herons standing in a marsh, stabbing at prey in the shallows, is familiar in many places. But a few heron species shun the daylight to hunt their prey by night. One of these nocturnal specialists, the Black-crowned Night-heron, is found across much of the US, as well as all the continents except Australia and Antarctica. It's even found in island groups as remote as Hawaii, making the Black-crowned Night-heron the most widespread heron on earth.

Such a far-flung range suggests highly successful adaptation. Feeding at night, Black-crowned Night-herons are freed from competing with the more numerous day-hunting herons. They are also very opportunistic feeders. While fish are often primary prey, the herons will consume everything from earthworms, to clams, to eggs of nesting birds, and refuse at landfills. They also have a flexibly long breeding season, which may enable them to thrive across such a broad geographic range.

Since they are high on the food chain, found over much of the world, and nest in colonies, Black-crowned Night-herons can tell us a great deal about the health – or contamination – of our environment.

This show was produced with support from the . The bird calls you hear on BirdNote come from the at the . To hear this show again, visit the website, .

Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Black-crowned Night-heron 136200 recorded by Martha J Fischer.
Riparian Zone Night Insects (Nature Sounds 120) recorded by Gordon Hempton.
BirdNote's theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Dominic Black
© 2014 Tune In to Nature.org      October 2014      Narrator: Michael Stein