'Nesting' Black Crowned Night Herons

A visit to the Heron Rookery on Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville Sunday afforded me a plethora of species of birds. Since I rarely get more than a glimpse of a Black Crowned Night Heron, I thought I would post images of them first. They were very busy flying in and out of the rookery. In this image, you can see the late afternoon sun casting its golden glow.

This Heron Rookery never ceases to amaze me with the different species that nest together in one large tree along the shoreline. I wonder have you ever tried to capture a Black Crowned Night Heron in flight? It's not like photographing a Great Blue Heron. They move much much slower than Night Herons. Night Herons fly much faster as they are not nearly as large a bird as their Great Blue Heron cousins. One never knows when you snap an image of one in flight, if it's even viable, but on this day I got very lucky.

I had trouble differentiating the leaves and tree branches from the Black Crowned Night Herons. The Great Blues stick out more as they are bigger, but the Night Herons being so small blend in. I snapped an image of a Great Blue Heron standing on a nest only to realize later that this Black Crowned Night Heron was sitting on its nest right below it.

Today there were Great Blue Herons, Black Crowned Night Herons, Cormorants and Great White Egrets flying all about the Heron Rookery, not to mention Barn Swallows and Canadian Geese. What a plethora and a pleasure to be in the company of such great species and able to photograph them. I will share Great Blue Heron images in a post soon. I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We finally, as you can see from these images, had a beautiful day Sunday with blue skies and low temperatures in the 70's. It was wonderful. ENJOY!