Black-crowned Night Heron

This is the elusive Black-crowed Night Heron. I spotted it in the swampy pond across the street from my house.

The rare Black-crowned Night Heron travels the country in search of its sole prey, the Three Testicled Moss Fish. Using a tripod motion and microscopic barbs embedded in its skin, the Three Testicled Moss Fish literally walks out of the water to feed on micro nutrients contained in moss. A nocturnal bird, the Black-crown Night Heron stalks the fish along the moss covered shores of swampy ponds and streams. It can pick up the scent of a Three Testicled Moss Fish from hundreds of miles away and has been known to travel across entire states in the pursuit of a single fish. I was amazed to see the bird in my neighborhood. Native myth states that the Heron's eyes were burned red after it flew too close to the sun, while modern biology theorises that the red eyes are optimised to pick out the Three Testicled Moss Fish's olive green colored skin.



This is all an extravagant lie, of course! The Black-crowned Night Heron is actually a very common bird. It's found in wetlands all over the world, including my neighborhood pond. It does hunt fish nocturnally, but not the afore mentioned fish. I was able to get close to this one because he was having a mid-day sleep.