Yellow-crowned night heron, along a pond at Railroad Park where yellow-crowns have come to hunt crawfish for years. Yellow-crowns belong to the heron family of birds, and the recent study on the North American bird population states that family’s numbers have dropped since 1970. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the North American Breeding Bird Survey “identified no statistically significant change” in the yellow-crowned population between 1966 and 2014, “although trends suggest a decline.” (Source: Tom Gordon)