Nyctanassa violacea

Ding Darling NWR, February 24, 2009

Adult in breeding plumage. I had about given up on finding a Yellow-crowned Night Heron until the last afternoon at the Refuge, when Donna (looking through the binoculars) saw this one on the far side of a huge pool and said "This one doesn't look like a great blue heron." She was right. I used the 500 mm lens with a 2X extender to get better "reach" of the bird, and then in post-processing cropped the original image. The result is a little noisy but shows the bold head pattern with white cheek, yellow crown and distinct plume.