Classic bird paintings
Black-crowned Night Heron painting: Audubon's plate and other classic portraits
John James Audubon painted the Black-crowned Night Heron as plate 236 of The Birds of America (1827–38), an adult male and a young bird, under the name Night Heron or Qua bird. That plate is the painting shown here, and a free high-resolution scan is on Audubon.org.
Updated
Audubon’s plate: plate 236, “Night Heron or Qua bird”
The young bird is shown as it looks after its first autumn molt, beside a frog that Audubon says the heron often eats in the swamps. He recorded the names people used: Indian Pullet in South Carolina, Gros-bec among the Creoles of Louisiana, Indian Hen in East Florida, and Qua Bird in the Eastern States, from the call it gives on its night flights, “loud hoarse notes resembling the syllable qua.”
In January in East Florida, on a bayou off the Halifax River, he found several hundred pairs already mated, with nests from earlier years still standing. He wrote that it goes through three yearly changes of plumage before it reaches its full adult dress.
Story: Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, vol. 3 (1835). See plate 236 free at Audubon.org.
More classic portraits, free to see
- John James Audubon, The Birds of America, octavo edition (1840–44), plate 363: “Black-Crowned Night Heron or Qua Bird”. Free scan (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
- John Gould’s The Birds of Europe (1832–37), plate 279: “Common Night Heron” (Nycticorax europaeus). Free scan (University of Kansas Libraries)
- John Gould’s The Birds of Great Britain (1862–73), vol. 4, plate 26: “Night-Heron” (Nycticorax griseus). Free scan (University of Kansas Libraries)
- Louis Agassiz Fuertes, for Elon H. Eaton’s Birds of New York (1910–14), plate 24: “Black-crowned Night Heron”, with Great Egret, Sandhill Crane and Great Blue Heron. Free scan (Internet Archive)
About the Black-crowned Night Heron
- Black-crowned Night Herons usually feed from late evening through the night, though they also hunt by day. (Source: National Audubon Society)
The oldest known wild Black-crowned Night Heron lived at least 21 years and 5 months: it was banded in California in 1992 and found there again in 2012. That is a record from bird banding, not a typical lifespan. (Source: USGS Bird Banding Laboratory, 2025 longevity table.) How long do wild birds live?
Buying a print?
An original plate 236 is a hand-colored sheet about 26 by 38 inches, printed in Britain in 1827–38; many prints sold today are reproductions or small 1840s octavo prints. How to tell an original from a reproduction.
In a Birdfolio, the hardcover book of your own life list, this painting sits beside the Black-crowned Night Heron with the date and place you first saw one. See your own list as a book, free.