Black-crowned Night-Heron

[Bill Dix]

After photographing the King Rail in a marsh along the Hudson River last week, we watched as a dozen Black-crowned Night-Herons came in to roost, one by one, in the fading light. This one had just landed on an old piling. Cropped from horizontal. Cleaned up the water just a bit.

D7000, 700mm, ISO 2000, 1/640s @ f/6.3 manual.

[Mike Milicia]

Nice pose and detail!

I think I'd actually prefer a horizontal for this pose.

[christopher galeski]

nice capture,good exposure,nice details,like the perch and light,agree on horizontal,and POV a tad lower,but still a very nice image.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Neat pose, and I like how it is clinging to the top of thew perch. Having the wings held up even higher would have been awesome, and I would also tone down the "hotter" part of the whites below the tail. Neat marbled texture to the BG.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Excellent capture, Bill. Beautiful light, wing position, and detail.

[Satish Ranadive]

Spectacular image, Bill Sir.
Very nice pose, beautiful colors and details.
Love the way it pops up against BG.

Regards,
Satish.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks everyone for your much-appreciated comments and suggestions.

Daniel, I agree a fully raised wing position would have been nice. He didn't do that. He had just come in for a landing, and the frame before this had his wings in a relatively unattractive braking position; the frame after, he was folding them for the night.

Mike and Christopher, I can see your point about the horizontal crop. There was a large creosoted timber lying in the mud just to the left, so I chose to crop it out. I suppose I could have cloned it out instead.