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... Sometimes Silly : )
Found this Night Heron Guarding the pond at a local park. He gave me the once-over and indicated I should “move-on, nothing to see here.”
Life is Good : )
Black-crowned Night-Herons are small herons with rather squat, thick proportions. They have thick necks, large, flat heads, and heavy, pointed bills. The legs are short and, in flight, barely reach the end of the tail. The wings are broad and rounded.
They are common in wetlands across North America, including saltmarshes, freshwater marshes, swamps, streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, lagoons, tidal mudflats, canals, reservoirs, and wet agricultural fields. They require aquatic habitat for foraging and terrestrial vegetation for cover. They spend the winter in southern and coastal portions of their breeding range as well as across Mexico and Central America.
Black-crowned Night-Herons are opportunists feeders that eat many kinds of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine animals. Their diet includes leeches, earthworms, insects, crayfish, clams, mussels, fish, amphibians, lizards, snakes, turtles, rodents, birds, and eggs. Black-crowned Night-Herons normally feed between evening and early morning, avoiding competition with other heron species that use the same habitat during the day.
Black-crowned Night-Herons nest colonially and behave socially all year long. Both males and females vigorously defend feeding and nesting territories, sometimes striking with their bills and grabbing each other’s bills or wings.
Night-herons are monogamous. The male advertises for a mate with displays that involve bowing and raising the long plume on his head. Both the male and the female incubate the eggs and brood the chicks, greeting each other with calls and raised feathers when switching over duties. The young leave the nest at the age of one month and move through the vegetation on foot, forming nocturnal flocks in feeding areas. They learn to fly when they are six weeks old, and then disperse widely.
600 mm, 1/500 @ f/7.1, ISO 800, edited to taste)