Nesting by one-year-old black-crowned night herons on Hope Island, Rhode Island

There have been few consistent reports concerning the frequency and success of nesting attempts by immature night herons of the genus Nycticorax. One- year-old Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) mated to 2-yr-old or older birds built nests and incubated eggs in the wild (Gross 1923). In a captive colony, many 1-yr-old pairs of night herons courted and built nests, and one pair successfully raised four young (Noble and Wurm 1942). One pair of 1-yr-old night herons laid eggs but did not produce young in a captive colony at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (H. Ohlendorf pers. comm.). Breeding among 1-yr-old birds of the closely related Nankeen Night Heron (Nycticorax caledonicus) is apparently common (Braithwaite and Clayton 1976). In contrast, in a 3-yr study of a colony of about 350 Black-crowned Night Heron pairs on Long Island, New York, no 1-yr-old breeders were observed (Allen and Mangels 1940)