Herons

Black-crowned Night Heron

Nachtreiher

Nycticorax nycticorax

Herons5 photosFirst seen: 4 September 2026

The Black-crowned Night Heron is a compact, mostly crepuscular heron found on every continent except Antarctica and Australia. It spends much of the day hidden in dense vegetation and often leaves communal roosts around dusk.

ID tip: Adults have a black crown and back, grey wings, red eyes and a short heavy bill. Immatures are brown with bold pale spotting; in flight all ages look compact, with broad rounded wings and toes projecting just beyond the tail.

First seen: 4 September 2026 · Lake Skadar · 5 photos in the collection.

Places in my records

Locations where this species is supported by a dated first record, an unambiguous single-place outing or a reviewed assignment.

Lake Skadar4 September 2026

Family: Herons (Ardeidae)
Length: 58–65 cm
Wingspan: 105–112 cm
Regional status: Summer visitor (Montenegro)
Conservation: Least Concern LCIUCN Red List · retrieved 5 September 2026
Habitat: Vegetated lake margins, reedbeds, rivers, marshes and wooded wetlands
Diet: Fish, amphibians, crustaceans, insects and other small animals

Built from verified occurrence records, not drawn by hand. Core range = the countries holding 99% of all records; the rest are scattered or vagrant records. Record counts track where people watch birds as much as where the birds are, so the map shows presence, not abundance. Data: GBIF (CC BY 4.0). Basemap: Natural Earth.

Black-crowned Night Heron

Places in my records

Selected photographs