Behavior
Uses variety of habitats including freshwater streams, rice fields, lakes, dry grasslands and salt marshes. Can feed during the day but prefers to feed at night or at dusk on fish, small mammals, amphibians, insects and young of other birds such as terns, herons and ibises. Roosts in trees during the day.  They have a greeting ceremony in which they stretch necks horizontally with breeding plumes on head raised as they touch bills. They nest in colonies or singly. They lay 3-5 pale blue-green eggs in a nest of twigs, reeds and finer material placed in reeds, a shrub or a tree up to 160 feet high.  Altricial with one brood and an incubation period of 24-26 days.