Ditch Birds

Which itch does the ditch bird itch?

Like crayfish in a blender man, like crayfish in a blender.

We live in a place that is cursed with poor drainage. Along with poor drainage comes crayfish that live in our lawn. Along with the crayfish come the ditch birds. The ditch birds have always been around, but until the last few years, they've mostly spent time in, or near, the ditch. Pretty clever name we came up with for them, isn't it? Two springs ago, a funny thing happened, they moved in. We think it was because of the guineas, they kind of look like slower much less graceful ditch birds. Kind of. We think the guineas are some sort of signal to the ditch birds that they're on safe territory, that this is a good place to nest, so they have. Last year we had 9 nests on our one and a half acres. This year we're down to 7, still a lot. When they became residents we broke out the bird book and properly identified them, it only seemed neighborly. Ditch birds are actually Yellow-crowned Night Herons. They're about as big as a guinea, but skinnier, and amazingly, louder. As their name suggests they're most active at night, wandering around catching crustaceans in the yard. They have a call that is sort of a cross between a monkey strangling a raccoon, or perhaps a raccoon strangling a monkey. It could go either way, but when you're falling asleep it sounds like whatever terrible thing is killing or dying, it's coming for you next. It makes wonderful nightmare material. The birds are mostly harmless aside from their screaming. They have caused a bit of a parking difficulty. Most of my yard is trees. The Yellow-crowned Night Heron nests, rests, and roosts in trees. My truck is parked under trees. To compound the issue, the herons seem mostly incapable of digesting their chosen diet of crayfish. This means that any unlucky hits look more like someone put a crayfish in a blender and poured it on your car than conventional bird poop. It's weird enough that it kind of freaked out the ladies in the car rider line at school yesterday necessitating a wash for my truck today.
 Yellow-crested Night Herons aren't pets, not even stretching the definition to it's limits, they're truly just residents of our yard. In fact, my Wednesday posts are veering dangerously away from 'pets' to 'creatures that live in my yard'. I think it's ok though, even on our small suburban lot, there's a lot of nature to see if you open your eyes and look. I'm continually fascinated by all of the stuff that lives on our little plot of land and love sharing it with the kids.