Bill Kinkead's find of one adult confirms two earlier ones, but there is
no other evidence that yellow-crowned night-herons have renewed nesting
at the Columbus site. Like Doreene, I've visited a number of times with
no sighting this year, with only one bedraggled-looking leftover nest.
I have been documenting nesting birds at this site since 1997
continuously until this year.
        As many as four adults, and from time to time an immature 'helper,'
have showed up there in late April yearly, with as many as three nests
occupied at once. The nest numbers dwindled to two, then one, and this
year only one adult bird--most likely a graduate from a previous nest
following a learned migration route--has been seen. Kinda sad, since
this has been a productive spot where humans have been able to observe
the entire cycle among this locally exotic species.
        I'm guessing that maybe next year--it seems too late in the season for
2014--two graduates of the local program might conceivably show up, and
might be male and female, and the cycle will begin again. But let's not
count on it. YCNH observations are growing scarcer in the state; I just
looked at the Spring 2000 issue of the Cardinal, when we had three nests
on Preston Rd in Columbus, and the apparent abandonment (save by a
single immature bird) of a previous colony near Greenlawn Dam, a bird in
Stark County, singles in the CVNRA and at Lake Logan, as well as in
Cleveland---all in May. On 4 June 2000, the Preston Rd colony had three
young, which were as large as their parents by the last week of the
month; all the birds were gone by 3 July.
Bill Whan
Columbus

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