Raritie that visited Canon City this fall

Walks both yesterday and today at the Canon City Riverwalk turned up no additional species so I will focus on a raritie that visited last month--an immature Yellow-crowned Night-Heron. I found the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron pictured here at 7:30 pm on August 17 at a small wetland along the Arkansas River only about 80-90 feet off the Canon City Riverwalk. I took these photos with my 10 power Olympus Z2100 digital camera when the bird was on my side of the river and only about 40-50 feet away. The bird was not flying away in the photo with its wing's outspread, it did this wing-stretching like behavior in the middle of a grooming session.

When I first saw the bird, it was bent over with it's head inside some reeds. With a rear view, at first I thought it was a Green Heron. Though we usually have 2+ Green Herons in areas along the Canon City Riverwalk, this would be a location in which I had not seen them previously. Then the bird raised its head and it became clear this was not a Green Heron.

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons are only rarely seen in eastern Colorado, usually only a few birds each year. They are considered to be either migrants or post-breeding vagrants. I continued to see this bird several times each week until September 16. I went out of town the next day and could not refind the bird after I returned and began looking again on September 23. However, another local birder with whom I had shared this sighting earlier did see the Night-Heron a last time on September 18.
On several occasions I watched this bird for around a half hour at a time. When I watched it foraging, it had an excellent prey catching rate around 80%+. I observed it catch and swallow a reddish colored crawdad that appeared to be 4-6 inches across--it certainly looked like a very large meal for this bird that gulped a lot as it swallowed it.

believe this bird, far out of its range, was able to stay over a month due to the fact it was feeding well and not disturbed much. There was not much fishing nearby due to low water levels, the area on the other side of the river is private property and didn't have a lot of use while the bird was around. There were no birders tromping through the wetland in order to flush it out so they could see it and I was very careful to not disturb the bird when it was nearby.

SeEtta