On my way to work last year, I made a discovery. A bird about three times larger than a pigeon was hunched on a power line overhead, an unfamiliar silhouette stooped over the street. This called for a closer look. I pulled over and confirmed that, as I had suspected, it was a Black-crowned Night-Heron holding forth in the April morning. I also saw that this heron had company. A few others were arranged nearby; stoic sentinels atop the roof of a building containing a buffet, a car insurance company, two cell phone stores, and a cash-for-gold business.
Black-crowned Night-Herons are not uncommon in Oakland. In fact, the largest night-heron rookery in the Bay Area is located in downtown Oakland. The birds have achieved a sort of local celebrity status, and in 2019 a group of elementary school students succeeded in making Nycticorax nycticorax the official city bird.
This group of half a dozen herons took me by surprise, though. It was the first time I had seen them in this neighborhood……
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Among Animals 