The first time I had seen a Black Crowned Night Heron, I was at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Cory and I had gone to Tucson, Arizona, in search of a Road Runner. While there were went to the Desert Museum and found a Black Crowned Night Heron roosting on a branch in a bush. We would not have seen it at all had a little girl not been peaking in the bushes and alerting her family to what she had found. The Night Heron in the bush did not move a whole lot, obviously used to the attentions of visitors to the Desert Museum.
It wasn't until Cory and I were in Hawaii at the Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park on the Big Island of Hawaii, that we found a Black Crowned Night Heron in the wild. The heron was avoiding humans and hunting for bait fish in the tidal pools on the beach. There were several other sea birds along the shore but the Night Heron was the most striking and the most graceful.
As we walked along the beach, we must have startled the Heron, it took off, but luckily flew almost directly toward us. I was happy to get some of these pretty cool shots of it in flight and foraging along the tidal pools. Admittedly, I did not spend too much time photographing this impressive bird. Very soon after these pictures Cory called me over to look at some sea turtles he found beaching themselves, and in order of precedence, at least in my mind, sea turtles come first. The Black Crowned Night Heron is still a very beautiful bird to look at though.
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