SUNDAY
JULY 14, 2019 11:10 AM
The bird
was spotted feeding below the spillway at Lake Ontelaunee.
This type
of sighting is always tantalizing.
Last
Sunday at Lake Ontelaunee, Matt Spence, along with Dale Beitzel and Barton and
Phil Smith, spotted an adult male black-crowned night-heron feeding below the
spillway at Lake Ontelaunee.
The
black-crowned night-heron is among my favorite birds, based on its rarity as a
breeding bird in Pennsylvania, where it is listed as a threatened species, and
the fact that at least one black-crowned night-heron nesting colony had been a
part of the Berks scene for a century or more.
That
nesting streak came to an end in the May 2014 hailstorm that obliterated the
last nesting site in Wyomissing Hills.
Plus,
this squat heron with its neck pulled in brings to mind an avian version of the
"Star Wars'" R2-D2 character, always eliciting a smile.
Birders
have been looking for the reassembly of that colony in Berks ever since, to no
avail.
The
closest nesting colony to us is one in Ephrata that's been active for close to
a decade.
Whether
any Berks refugees from Wyomissing were absorbed into that colony is a matter
of speculation.
Patti
Barber, the threatened-and-endangered-species biologist for the Pennsylvania
Game Commission, noted that in 2018, four black-crowned nesting colonies were
reported in the state.
Now, what
makes the sighting at Ontelaunee so juicy is its timing.
It's
right on the cusp.
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