After a late morning trip to Jones Beach to see the Red Phalarope, Eric Reubel and I made a quick stop at Cammanns Pond Park in Merrick. (Never having read anything about it on the list serves, we'd first happened upon it by accident late last December and were quite surprised to find 20 Black-crowned Night-Heron's there at the time). We were equally surprised yesterday when we saw not only four Black-crowned Night-Herons, but a whopping 17 Yellow-crowned Night-Herons. There were at least four juvenile YCNH's present, as well as evidence of at least one empty nest. We were only able to stick around for 20 minutes or so (and kept finding more individuals by the minute), so I would be shocked if there weren't even more there than we found. I'm assuming others must be well aware of the Night-Heron rookery on the island in the middle of the pond, but it was heretofore unknown to us and made for a nice way to end the day.
Amy Simmons NYC, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
