![\"yellow-crowned](\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/ClarkYellowCrown.jpg\")
Cruising around the neighborhood pond the other evening, I spotted this yellow-crowned night heron (Nyctanassa violacea<\/em>) as it left a treetop nearby and flew a bit further on, allowing a closer approach as long as it was done slowly and quietly. The behavior was a little cooperative, the light considerably less so, semi-overcast and backlit, so not only is this a pretty muted image, it’s been tweaked away from an even worse state. Nonetheless, night herons are cool, a hair (feather) larger than the green herons with a really harsh barking squawk<\/a>, distinctive with that white stripe and the larger eyes. And of course that no-nonsense bill.<\/p>\n
The next evening as I approached the house, I found Kaylee crouched in the front door, a favorite nature-watching spot of hers and Monster’s.<\/p>\n
I have a few things to get done, and a few more clips to capture to flesh out a planned video, so we’re just gonna have a couple of placeholders in here, okay? [Plowing ahead without waiting for an answer] Cruising around the neighborhood pond the other evening, I spotted this yellow-crowned night heron (Nyctanassa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[1418,4162,70],"class_list":["post-32231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-kaylee","tag-nyctanassa-violacea","tag-yellow-crowned-night-heron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Kaylee](\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/WhosCrosseyed.jpg\")
This was also shot with the long lens, and if you’re getting the impression that she’s slightly cross-eyed, you’re not mistaken – this is evidence of her Siamese heritage. Also perhaps faintly visible, she doesn’t like making eye-contact with me, despite the distance and the intervening camera, and so she’s looking ever-so-slightly to my left. I play a game with her sometimes, in that I notice which way she’s shifted her gaze and keep leaning into it, forcing her to keep turning her head aside subtly (she won’t look away<\/em> – she has to keep her peripheral vision on me) until she finally realizes what I’m up to and abruptly shifts her gaze slightly to the other<\/em> side. I’ve never determined why this is, but she bonded early on with The Girlfriend and this is how she enforces my status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"