Hello Everyone and Welcome to my first #featheredfriends Post for 2021.
First off a big shout out and Hello to 
Today I present the Dark Crowned/Caped Night Heron.
All images taken on Woodley Island in Humboldt Bay California with a Cannon EOS T7 equipped with a Sigma 150 mm to 600mm C Telephoto lens.
I drove out to Woodley Island on Wednesday looking for the Night Herons in particular for this post. They are mostly nocturnal so they hunt at night and roost and by the looks of it also poop all day lol (holy cow).
The tree they normally roost in got blasted in the storms this winter an the whole south side was broken and battered with a work crew still cutting back the splintered branches and cleaning up the debris.
I almost didn't find them but an obnoxious crow helped me out by messing with this Herons little one and getting clobbered for it.
I was walking back to the car to leave when I hear a crow squawking bloody murder and more than a little trashing around in the top of a big Bay tree behind me. As I turn to look a crow comes careening out of the tree top half falling a few feet and the Heron imaged above flies out and takes up sentry duty outside the canopy cover.
Junior here was at the very top of the tree, it's nest is down a couple of feet in the canopy cover.
I tried to image some of the others as there are about a half dozen nests with one or more birds in it but the tree is to dense and the base is in the non accessible part of the wildlife area
I tried to image the crow as it was comical looking but it was long gone by the time I got the lens cover off and the camera back on. I can say it flying was erratic and I could see it was missing about 3 flight feathers out of it's wings and at least one tail feather was missing, lots of gaps in those feathers lol
Mr. Crow got lucky cuz Night Herons are predators, those beaks are are long, sharp and powerful
Had to chuckle when I got to the image below in editing... Such a comical look. I was shooting in burst node and this one was looking around for the source of the noise and gave me a front on profile shot.
I imaged these two from all the angles I could, I finally got a shot of this one turned so you can see the long plume feather that protrudes from the back of the head
Well that's all I have for today but #featheredfriends is one of my favorite communities so you'll be seeing more from me over the coming days and weeks.
Remember #fetheredfriends for all your feathered odds and ends =)
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Unless otherwise noted:
All images original, by me. In this case with my Cannon EOS Rebel T7.
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