Black-crowned Night Heron Pair

Black-crowned night herons are ubiquitous. In other word, they are all over the place. My most recent sighting was in Central Park in New York City and before that I saw them in Tanzania's Ngoro Ngoro crater. I've viewed them in Toronto and the Falkland Islands. They're found all across North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia and they are quite common even in urban areas.

But very few people know about them because they are night herons. Their nocturnal habits bring them obvious advantages in catching frogs and other wetland prey. I usually notice them by their raucous quack calls and then I see their large moth-like silhouettes flopping against the willows. The inspiration for this painting came from Japanese art and from the work of James McNeill Whistler. In the 19th century he painted a serious of nocturne paintings in that quiet and magical period between dusk and night.