28-11-2016 JURONG, SINGAPORE - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

14-8-2017 AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

4-5-2017 CORDOBA, ANDALUCIA - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/4981-Nycticorax-nycticorax

26-3-2017 CATIE CENTER, COSTA RICA - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

4-1-2016 HONG KONG - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

28-11-2016 JURONG, SINGAPORE - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

28-11-2016 JURONG, SINGAPORE - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

5-11-2016 SHANGHAI, CHINA - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

5-11-2016 SHANGHAI, CHINA - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

19-3-2015 JURONG, SINGAPORE - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

Black-crowned Night Herons are stocky birds compared to many of their long-limbed heron relatives. They’re most active at night or at dusk, when you may see their ghostly forms flapping out from daytime roosts to forage in wetlands. In the light of day adults are striking in gray-and-black plumage and long white head plumes. These social birds breed in colonies of stick nests usually built over water. They live in fresh, salt, and brackish wetlands and are the most widespread heron in the world.

Black-crowned Night Herons nest in groups that often include other species, including herons, egrets, and ibises.

A breeding Black-crowned Night Heron will brood any chick that is placed in its nest. The herons apparently don’t distinguish between their own offspring and nestlings from other parents.

Young Black-crowned Night Herons leave the nest at the age of 1 month but cannot fly until they are 6 weeks old. They move through the vegetation on foot, joining up in foraging flocks at night.

3-8-2016 ULAL DE BOLDOVI, VALENCIA - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

3-8-2016 ULAL DE BOLDOVI, VALENCIA - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

19-3-2015 JURONG, SINGAPORE - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

Black-crowned Night Herons are small herons with rather squat, thick proportions. They have thick necks, large, flat heads, and heavy, pointed bills. The legs are short and, in flight, barely reach the end of the tail. The wings are broad and rounded.

Adults are light-gray birds with a neatly defined black back and black crown. Immatures are brown with large white spots on the wings and blurry streaks on the underparts. Adults have all-black bills; immatures have yellow-and-black bills.

Black-crowned Night Herons often spend their days perched on tree limbs or concealed among foliage and branches. They forage in the evening and at night, in water, on mudflats, and on land. In flight they fold their head back against their shoulders, almost making the neck disappear.

These are social birds that tend to roost and nest in groups, although they typically forage on their own. Look for them in most wetland habitats across North America, including estuaries, marshes, streams, lakes, and reservoirs.

26-11-2015 SINGAPORE - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

The black-crowned night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax), or black-capped night-heron, commonly shortened to just night-heron in Eurasia, is a medium-sized heron found throughout a large part of the world, including parts of Europe, Asia, and North and South America. In Australasia it is replaced by the closely related nankeen night-heron (N. caledonicus), with which it has hybridized in the area of contact.

Adults have a black crown and back with the remainder of the body white or grey, red eyes, and short yellow legs. They have pale grey wings and white under parts. Two or three long white plumes, erected in greeting and courtship displays, extend from the back of the head. The sexes are similar in appearance although the males are slightly larger. Black-crowned night-herons do not fit the typical body form of the heron family. They are relatively stocky with shorter bills, legs, and necks than their more familiar cousins, the egrets and "day" herons. Their resting posture is normally somewhat hunched but when hunting they extend their necks and look more like other wading birds.

Immature birds have dull grey-brown plumage on their heads, wings, and backs, with numerous pale spots. Their underparts are paler and streaked with brown. The young birds have orange eyes and duller yellowish-green legs. They are very noisy birds in their nesting colonies, with calls that are commonly transcribed as quok or woc.

The breeding habitat is fresh and salt-water wetlands throughout much of the world. The subspecies N. n. hoactli breeds in North and South America from Canada as far south as northern Argentina and Chile, N. n. obscurus in southernmost South America, N. n. falklandicus in the Falkland Islands, and the nominate race N. n. nycticorax in Europe, Asia and Africa. Black-crowned night-herons nest in colonies on platforms of sticks in a group of trees, or on the ground in protected locations such as islands or reedbeds. Three to eight eggs are laid.

This heron is migratory in the northernmost part of its range, but otherwise resident (even in the cold Patagonia). The North American population winters in Mexico, the southern United States, Central America, and the West Indies, and the Old World birds winter in tropical Africa and southern Asia.

A colony of the herons has regularly summered at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. for more than a century. The birds also prominently live year-round in the shores around the San Francisco Bay, with the largest rookery in Oakland. Their ever presence at Oakland's Lake Merritt and throughout the city's downtown area, as well as their resilience to the urban environment and displacement efforts, have led to them being named Oakland's official city bird.

There are two archaeological specimens of the black-crowned night-heron in Great Britain. The oldest is from the Roman London Wall and the more recent from the Royal Navy's late medieval victualling yards in Greenwich. It appears in the London poulterers' price lists as the Brewe, a bird which was thought to have been the Eurasian whimbrel or glossy ibis, which has now been shown to refer to the black-crowned night-heron, derived from the medieval French Bihoreau. Black-crowned night-heron may have bred in the far wetter and wider landscape of pre-modern Britain. They were certainly imported for the table so the bone specimens themselves do not prove they were part of the British avifauna. In modern times the black-crowned night-heron is a vagrant and feral breeding colonies were established at Edinburgh Zoo from 1950 into the 21st century and at Great Witchingham in Norfolk, where there were 8 pairs in 2003 but breeding was not repeated in 2004 or 2005. A pair of adults were seen with two recently fledged juveniles in Somerset in 2017, which is the first proven breeding record of wild black-crowned night-herons in Great Britain.

These birds stand still at the water's edge and wait to ambush prey, mainly at night or early morning. They primarily eat small fish, leeches, earthworms, mussels, squid, crustaceans (such as crayfish), frogs, other amphibians, aquatic insects, terrestrial insects, lizards, snakes, small mammals (such as rodents), small birds, eggs, carrion, plant material, and garbage and refuse at landfills. They are among the seven heron species observed to engage in bait fishing; luring or distracting fish by tossing edible or inedible buoyant objects into water within their striking range – a rare example of tool use among birds. During the day they rest in trees or bushes. N. n. hoactli is more gregarious outside the breeding season than the nominate race.

Black-crowned Night Herons nest in groups that often include other species, including herons, egrets, and ibises. A breeding Black-crowned Night Heron will brood any chick that is placed in its nest. The herons apparently don't distinguish between their own offspring and nestlings from other parents.

8-12-2015 KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON (Nycticorax nycticorax)

The black-crowned night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax), or black-capped night-heron, commonly shortened to just night-heron in Eurasia, is a medium-sized heron found throughout a large part of the world, including parts of Europe, Asia, and North and South America. In Australasia it is replaced by the closely related nankeen night-heron (N. caledonicus), with which it has hybridized in the area of contact.

The black-crowned night-heron was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with herons, cranes and egrets in the genus Ardea and coined the binomial name Ardea nicticorax. It is now placed in the genus Nycticorax that was introduced in 1817 by the English naturalist Thomas Forster for this species. The epithet nycticorax is from Ancient Greek and combines nux, nuktos meaning "night" and korax meaning "raven". The word was used by authors such as Aristotle and Hesychius of Miletus for a "bird of ill omen", perhaps an owl. The word was used by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner in 1555 and then by subsequent authors for a black-crowned night-heron.

Adults have a black crown and back with the remainder of the body white or grey, red eyes, and short yellow legs. They have pale grey wings and white under parts. Two or three long white plumes, erected in greeting and courtship displays, extend from the back of the head. The sexes are similar in appearance although the males are slightly larger. Black-crowned night-herons do not fit the typical body form of the heron family. They are relatively stocky with shorter bills, legs, and necks than their more familiar cousins, the egrets and "day" herons. Their resting posture is normally somewhat hunched but when hunting they extend their necks and look more like other wading birds.

Immature birds have dull grey-brown plumage on their heads, wings, and backs, with numerous pale spots. Their underparts are paler and streaked with brown. The young birds have orange eyes and duller yellowish-green legs. They are very noisy birds in their nesting colonies, with calls that are commonly transcribed as quok or woc.

Measurements:

Length: 22.8–26 in (58–66 cm)

Weight: 25.6–35.8 oz (726–1,015 g)

Wingspan: 45.3–46.5 in (115–118 cm)

The breeding habitat is fresh and salt-water wetlands throughout much of the world. The subspecies N. n. hoactli breeds in North and South America from Canada as far south as northern Argentina and Chile, N. n. obscurus in southernmost South America, N. n. falklandicus in the Falkland Islands, and the nominate race N. n. nycticorax in Europe, Asia and Africa. Black-crowned night-herons nest in colonies on platforms of sticks in a group of trees, or on the ground in protected locations such as islands or reedbeds. Three to eight eggs are laid.

This heron is migratory in the northernmost part of its range, but otherwise resident (even in the cold Patagonia). The North American population winters in Mexico, the southern United States, Central America, and the West Indies, and the Old World birds winter in tropical Africa and southern Asia.

A colony of the herons has regularly summered at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. for more than a century. The birds also prominently live year-round in the shores around the San Francisco Bay, with the largest rookery in Oakland. Their ever presence at Oakland's Lake Merritt and throughout the city's downtown area, as well as their resilience to the urban environment and displacement efforts, have led to them being named Oakland's official city bird.