Black-crowned Night Heron in flightBlack-crowned Night Heron lift off – Nikon D200, f6.3, 1/2000, ISO 500, Nikkor 200-400mm VR with 1.4x TC at 350mm, natural light

This is another image that reminds me of the day I photographed it and the great memories of that photo session. I sat with this Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) for several minutes on the auto tour loop of Bear River National Wildlife Refuge in Box Elder County, Utah.

My Nikon D300 is giving me the fits, I’ve had it checked out locally and they can’t replicate the issues I am having of the exposure going wonky intermittently, my shutter speed will go from 1/1000 or higher and then drop to 1/4 to 1/60 resulting in pure snowy white images. Yuck. At any rate right now I am using my backup D200’s until I can get the D300 sent to Nikon.

The day didn’t start off looking great, it looked like it might be cloudy but the light stayed over the refuge while to the south it didn’t look great. There were birds, birds and more birds on the auto tour loop and I was able to catch some wonderful action.

This heron was standing on a little spit of dry land at the edge of a marshy pond, for a bit it just stood there, then it preened a while. Before too long I could see the bird was going to lift off and fly away. I was ready!

I was able to take a nice series of images of the Black-crowned Night Heron lift off and and the heron in flight as it flew past me, I really liked the position of the wings, the look at the intensely red eye and those big, dangling yellow feet in this frame.

Great light. Plenty of birds. Super company. I was a happy camper!

Life is good.

Mia

Click here to see more of my Black-crowned Night Heron photos plus facts and information about this species.