Black-crowned Night-Heron

About the Black-crowned Night-Heron

The Black-crowned Night-Heron is a stocky, no-neck heron built for the night shift. Adults are handsome birds -- black cap and back over pearl-gray wings, with a heavy dagger of a bill and deep red eyes that hint at the hours they keep. Long white head plumes appear in breeding season.

As the name says, this heron does most of its fishing between dusk and dawn, standing motionless at the water's edge waiting for fish, crawfish, or frogs to drift into range. By day they hunch in waterside trees, often in loose groups, looking like gray footballs tucked into the branches. The flight call, a flat "quok" in the dark, is a common sound over Texas wetlands even when the bird itself is never seen.

They occur across Texas year-round wherever there is quiet water. I photographed this bird at Delta Lake in the Rio Grande Valley in December 2022, one of a group loafing through the afternoon in the shoreline trees.

For photographers the daytime roost is the opportunity: find the loafing tree and you can work a bird that has absolutely no intention of moving. Watch the red eye -- getting a catchlight in it is what makes the portrait.