BY 1981 THE smallpox patients had been long gone from North Brother Island. The war veterans evacuated, the drug addicts no longer treated there. The island became known only as a nesting colony for the black-crowned night heron. Smallish, unassuming-looking birds that spend hours and hours clicking at each other, then stumble into asthmatic squawking when the mood hits. The night herons ruled the island for over twenty years, but in the early part of the twenty-first century, they abandoned it. The reason for their departure remained unknown, a bit of birder curiosity at best, nothing news
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