You have definitely never seen a “penguin with long legs”!

The Palace Museum published the "Illustrated Collection of Sea Creatures" by Nie Huang of the Qing Dynasty, and I was lucky enough to borrow it and take a look. Although it is called "Illustrated Collection of Sea Creatures", it should mainly depict creatures in the sea, but also other animals that appear on the seashore, such as birds. There are nearly ten kinds of birds in "Illustrated Collection of Sea Creatures". Birds like sparrows are drawn very accurately by the author, but most of the birds are drawn in an extremely abstract way. Some of the content is even heard from fishermen and then freely played with their own imagination. It is really funny and tearful to interpret it. Fortunately, there is a text narration next to the picture for reference.

Photo provided by the author: The long neck of the night heron sub-adult

01

What exactly is this bird with a “long neck, long beak and long legs”?

Among them, there is a bird that is very misleading. From the picture, it has a long neck, a long beak, long legs, and white feathers. It must be a egret. However, the picture drawn by this outrageous author must be interpreted in conjunction with the text. There is a paragraph of text next to the picture saying that it has a long beak and long legs, which is obviously the characteristic of herons. It only comes out at night, calls at night, and even goes into the water to catch fish. Huh? This is very confusing. How can egrets have such habits? Most egrets leave in the morning to fish in their respective "fishing grounds". In the evening, they fly back to the sleeping trees to sleep collectively. At night, let alone calling, there is no movement. But there is a kind of heron that really comes out to fish at night, that is, the night heron. Their calls are extremely frightening, similar to the barking of dogs and the cry of geese. A sudden call at night can scare people to death.

But the description of going into the water confused me. Herons have long legs and often move around in the shallows near the water, wading to catch fish, but they don't go into the water like ducks. We habitually call this type of water bird wading birds. I once suspected that the author had misjudged the active grebe in the water as a heron. In addition, the habit of appearing in the middle of the night made me suspect that the author had combined several types of birds into one egret that often appears in the daytime.

Photo provided by the author: Night heron entering the water

Until one day, I went to the Summer Palace for a leisurely stroll and saw a few small gray dots on the water. I thought they were birds I had never seen before, but when I looked through the telescope, I found that they were actually swimming on the water. It turns out that night herons can swim! Although I don’t know how they can kick up water with their webbed claws, this has indeed refreshed my understanding of night herons and answered my long-standing doubts: the "white egret" in "Haicuo Tu" is definitely a night heron.

Photo provided by the author: Night heron takes off

02

The night heron looks like a "penguin"

In fact, night herons are very common around us. From south to north in our country, as long as there is a lake and some vegetation in a city park, you can find them. That is why night herons have become one of the most frequently asked birds. The public's understanding of night herons comes more from a nonsensical news content. A zoo has a group of penguins in its aquarium, and the keepers feed them fish every day. Until a sharp-eyed tourist found a "penguin" that looked different among the penguins, and later discovered that this guy was the night heron who came to the penguin group to eat and drink. Huddled among the penguins, they are actually somewhat similar. From then on, the night heron was nicknamed "penguin" among bird-watching enthusiasts.

Photo provided by the author丨Real penguin

From the Internet

Of course, only during the day will the night heron transform into a "penguin" form. Don't be fooled by its round and plump appearance, it is still a heron after all, and a long neck is what it should be like. Whether it is resting or flying, herons will retract their necks. At other times, especially when fishing, their long necks are useful. We can all see other herons stretching their necks, but night herons rarely do so. This is precisely because daytime is the "off-duty" time for night herons, so we mostly see them resting by the water, on tree branches, or on a wooden pole in the middle of the water with their necks retracted to rest. Some night herons gather on tree branches to rest, and dozens of them can stand on the branches, which is their exclusive quiet moment.

Photo provided by the author: The night heron with its neck tucked in looks a bit like a penguin

From the Internet

Note! The above is a joke. In fact, each one is a night heron in a different pose.

03

Night herons look very different at different ages

Among these resting gray-blue night herons, there are some birds with different body colors. Except for the brown body color, their size, body shape, and even the slightly wretched appearance of shrinking their necks are exactly the same. They are still night herons, but they are a little different in age from the gray-blue version of the night heron. The brown version of the night heron is a baby born this year. The baby night heron was born that year and can live independently that year, but it is not yet fully grown up. Compared with the gray-blue elders, their survival experience is still shallow and not enough to deal with various emergencies. However, this gray body color is not very conducive to finding a partner. After they really become adults, they will change into gray-blue feathers, and there will be a small braid behind their heads. This is the "wedding feathers" necessary for finding a partner.

Photo provided by the author丨Adult night heron

Night herons are fully heron-like when they are on "night shift". After a day's rest, they begin to disperse to their respective "fishing grounds", mainly feeding on fish and frogs, which live in the water. So the question is, how do they see their prey in the water when it is pitch dark at night? The key to the problem lies in their eyes.

Adults and young birds of night herons are more or less similar to some herons. The most accurate way to recognize them is to look at their eyes - their eyes are "coated" with a layer of red irises. Red irises can better perceive objects under weak light. In this regard, we humans also use it flexibly. For example, red films are coated on telescopes in some fields, so that targets can be seen clearly even in dim environments. Infrared rays other than red can form images in a completely dark environment, so we have infrared cameras, which are used to monitor animals active at night. Therefore, with the help of weak moonlight, the eyes of night herons can accurately capture their prey, and the prey may not be able to see that their natural enemies have already put their heads in front of them.

Photo provided by the author: Night heron sub-adult

Night herons have gradually adapted to life in the city. We can easily find them in parks and wetlands. They have gradually discovered that humans are not dangerous, so they are getting closer and closer to humans, but this has also brought some problems. There are hundreds of night herons living in the waterfowl lake of the Beijing Zoo, eating and drinking for free, which has become a landscape in the zoo. But this brings the risk of an outbreak of avian influenza, and the zoo has to saw off a few branches on which they stand, hoping that they will go elsewhere.

Night herons not only catch fish in the wild, but also sneak into people's gardens and quietly take away the owner's precious koi, which is ridiculous. However, some night herons will enter the fish pond to steal commercial fish. In order to avoid losses, the fish pond owner can only surround them with nets, so some night herons will jump on the nets and die from entanglement.

I'm afraid these regrettable things can't be entirely blamed on humans, nor can they be entirely blamed on night herons. There is still a long way to go before humans and night herons can live in harmony.

Author | Ye Zhengrong

Review | Huang Chengming, Researcher, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

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