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night heron
noun
: any of various widely distributed nocturnal or crepuscular herons (especially genus Nycticorax)
Examples of night heron in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
In Bharatpur, India, under short twilight in 1995, scientists reported night herons leaving their daytime roosts.
—Geraldine Castro, WIRED, 6 Apr. 2024
By this point, many of the young night herons hatched in Fells Point earlier this year have grown their feathers and flown away.
—Christine Condon, Baltimore Sun, 5 Sep. 2023
These measures include surveillance of dense tree canopies, and when a cattle egret or night heron is seen, some loud noises.
—Brandi Addison, Dallas News, 22 Apr. 2021
Frogs trilled and bellowed and croaked, a night heron gave a coarse cough.
—Alexandra Fuller, Travel + Leisure, 21 Aug. 2020
Spotted salamanders breed here and night herons roost, alongside coots and grebes.
—Alexis Soloski, New York Times, 13 May 2020
Feathered friends: Over the years there has been Ahab the one-legged Heermann’s gull, Sylvester the night heron, Wee Willie the snowy egret, Nasty the blue heron, Big Ernie the giant egret and many others.
—Tom Stienstra, SFChronicle.com, 22 Dec. 2019
There was a paddling of ducks drifting about, a single cormorant, a great blue heron watching from a nearby eucalyptus tree, a snowy egret and a couple of juvenile night herons pocking around at the water’s edge.
—Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Oct. 2019
Sho-Fu-En is home to wildlife: hawks and night herons, rabbits and raccoons, geese, squirrels, a fox, turtles, toads and fish and dragonflies.
—Colleen Smith, The Denver Post, 29 June 2019
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'night heron.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
1785, in the meaning defined above
Dictionary Entries Near night heron
Cite this Entry
“Night heron.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/night%20heron. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024.
More from Merriam-Webster on night heron
Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about night heron
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