A pair of Yellow-crowned Night Herons have returned to Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve, our neighborhood nature preserve ITP (Inside-the-Perimeter Atlanta). Last year they successfully nested and fledged a juvenile.
They appear to be another species whose breeding range seems to be moving north. Range maps shows their northern boundary as the Fall Line, the geological boundary that marks the division between the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions, running northeast from Columbus to Augusta.
Because the Piedmont is the foothills of the Appalachian mountains and higher elevations the Fall Line has been a marker for cooler temperatures and habitat differences.
Until the last 30 years. With warming average temperatures, some species are able to expand their breeding range 90 miles north into metro-Atlanta.
Steve , Clyde Shepherd’s daughter ,Aubrey ,was in my 2nd grade class the first year I taught after college . I have often hoped she and all the others overcame that . Elementary and high schools were in the beautiful building which I am SICK to think will be abandoned . On night herons another anecdote – for years I taught an adult Sunday school class once a month . Never one to get all done ahead I got up around 5 on Sunday to finish . One Spring season I heard a loud bird call from behind our house several times . Curious about what it was ,Linton stopped one pre-dawn coming from the hospital and recorded it on dictating machine . He got it identified as a night heron who we theorized had. nested deep in our woods where there was a creek . Do you. think that was correct ? June Bishop