The Black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax)

It is mainly active at dusk, often flying even at night, although this can be all day during nesting; the actual flight, however, is slower. Whilst hunting the night heron stands motionless on banks, fallen trunks or the edges of vegetation. A characteristic position is sitting with its neck drawn in. Its main food consists of various kinds of fish ranging from five to twenty centimetres in length, frogs, gastropods and, to a lesser extent, invertebrates - mainly insects and larvae.

NESTING

It starts nesting around two years, usually by ponds and marshes, near lakes, slow water flows with flooded areas of scrub, tree and reeds. The nest may be high up in the trees, in bushes or in reeds.

It lays approximately three to five green-blue eggs; both partners take turns in incubating the eggs and then feeding the young. Chicks hatch after about twenty one days, they leave the nest about twenty days after hatching, after thirty or forty days they are able of fly. Young birds leave the home colony very quickly and at this time they can even be found in large cities.

The night heron is sociable and generally nests in communities, often a few individuals stay together even after the nesting season. Nesting colonies are traditionally returned to annually for a number of years.

The European night heron population is migratory. The main wintering sites are primarily the tropical regions of West and Central Africa, the Nile River basin, but sometimes even Southern and Eastern Africa.

The migratory routes are southern (over Italy, Sicily and Malta) and southwestern (across the Iberian Peninsula and the Strait of Gibraltar). Observations of night herons in Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, however, confirm the usage of an eastern migratory path.

The birds leave the nesting sites in July and August and the migration takes place in August and September. The latest documented departure was in November and there are even cases in which healthy birds don’t leave their European breeding ground even in winter. The night heron has been observed in its African wintering grounds in October.

A list of wintering grounds in Africa:
Mali, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Chad. The first birds return to their European nesting grounds in late March and throughout April. Only rarely do the young immature birds return to the nesting grounds the following year - it is likely that some young birds do not leave the African wintering grounds in the second year of life.