This heron has yellow head plumes and a black-and-white face; it searches shallow wetlands for crabs and crayfish.
It has smooth purple-grey plumage, a bold black-and-white face and long yellow plumes. It is stockier than a typical heron.
Yellow-crowned Night Herons bred with other herons in a mangrove at the mouth of the Pedreira River in Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. The colony was beside the port of São Francisco do Sul. Researchers visited weekly from August 2011 through March 2012 and counted 210 nests: 60 belonged to Yellow-crowned Night Herons and 150 to Egretta herons.
At this colony, hatching success for Yellow-crowned Night Herons was 49%, and chick survival was 32%. For Egretta herons at the same site, hatching success was 50% and chick survival was 24%. Colony activity began at the end of winter, was greatest from September to December, and ended in early autumn.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
At a mangrove colony beside a port, researchers counted 60 Yellow-crowned Night Heron nests among 210 nests in 2011–2012. Hatching success was 49% and chick survival 32% for this species, compared with 50% and 24% for Egretta herons at the same colony.