The predator of the darkness

ID: Night heron

While eagerly awaiting to capture some good frames of the full-ish moon, the unusual weather/pollution played a spoilsport, leading to delayed sighting of the moon and could just manage to frame the full moon very late into the evening. But as the darkness surged in, there seemed to be some movement few metres from us, with a mild ambient light, from the neighbouring structure, some ghostly thing seemed to be prowling in the marsh. On flashing some light from the car's headlamp, it turned out to be a small group of Night herons scorching through the mucky marsh on a look out for some prized catch. After sometime though, this particular one decided to move ahead, to a different area, probably in search of some potential, easier catch, and left behind the other ones behind. While this traverse, it decided to stop at this particular spot, atleast for a short while and the light from the stadium/structure, on the other side of the creek, seemed to bring in the interesting silhouette of the predator. Thats the moment I tried to frame the beauty, representing the mystery it carried in the darkness.

EXIF:
Canon 80D
Tamron 100-400 VC(Thanks to Anil Kumar Verma Sir for lending it)
F/8
Shutterspeed 1/6
ISO 2000
Rested on the thigh, No flash fired

Location: Kolshet creek

Nice silhouette. The low shutter speed has brought out different textures in the water, making it look like a painting. Did you try any compositions with a higher shutter speed? Thanks for sharing.

Agree with Mrudul, the texture in water makes the picture look like painting!
Title of the post is accurate, keep it up! :)

Mrudul madam, couldnt manage any higher shutterspeeds as it was almost pitch dark, from my side, and with ISO already in 2000, i wasnt comfortable pushing it further. Did attempt to get some vertical composition, but my tripod wasnt capable of handling the heavy load of the lens and the camera, so wasnt successful.

Very agile predator, active near moonlit marshes. Nice pose. Well done. Thanks for sharing. SaktiWild