Yellow-Crowned Night Heron at Orlando Wetlands Park

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron

The Yellow-Crowned Night Heron was the last of the Egret/Heron/Bittern family of birds that I found.  Even though they aren't rare, they always seemed to elude me.  But this past summer I found my first of these magificent birds at Orlando Wetlands Park.  Since then I've seen them frequently there by the influent.  One in particular used to like to stand in a pool by the path, and right before I could see him clearly, he'd fly away.  Thankfully, he seemed to like to fly in a circle around me, so I'm usually able to get a few photographs of him in flight.

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron

Yellow Crowned-Night Herons can be distinguished fairly readily from Black-Crowned Night Herons by a thick black eye stripe and yellow on the tops of their heads.  To me they look kind of comical, but they're still one of my favorite birds to see.

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron