"Adult male in breeding plumage.--Black above, glossed with dark green, and with a slight shade of slaty gray on the mantle; upper scapulars like the back, lower ones light ashy gray; wings entirely light ashy gray or dove-color, with a slight shade of dull oily green on secondaries; lower back, rump, upper tail-coverts, and tail clear gray or dove-color; head crested, black, and with a dark green gloss, and having two long white nuchal plumes; base of forehead white, extending above eye to behind the latter; feathers below the eye, cheeks, throat, and under parts pure white; ear-coverts and sides of neck delicate isabelline gray, extending in a collar round hind neck, and to sides of body; thighs and under tail-coverts white; under wing-coverts and axillars very pale ashy. Length, about 457; culmen, 76; wing, 267; tail, 102; tarsus, 71. "Adult female in breeding plumage.--Similar to the male in color and having the same long white plumes on the nape. Upper mandible slaty black with a whitish streak near the edges, central portion of lower mandible flesh-color, greenish towards base; skin round the eye pale green; tarsi and feet pale yellow; iris crimson." (T. Ayres.) "Adults in winter plumage.--Similar to the breeding plumage, but much greener on head and back, and not having the drooping white plumes on the nape. "Young.--Brown above, varied with longitudinal triangular centers of rufous or buff to the feathers of back and wing-coverts; quills and tail-feathers tipped with white; head blackish, crest-feathers centered with rufous; sides of face and under surface of body fulvescent, streaked with dusky black, with which the feathers are margined; thighs, under wing-coverts, and axillars streaked like the sides of body; throat whitish. "The full-grown young bird is similarly marked to the nestling described, but all the streaks and spots are much paler, the throat and under surface of the body being white, with a few dusky streaks. Judging from a specimen in the Tweeddale Collection from Canton, the adult plumage is assumed during the next breeding season, and even the white nape-plumes are put on, but the coloring of the head and back is not so bright as in older birds." (Sharpe.) The common night heron in abundant in parts of Luzon but is not so widely distributed in the smaller islands as is the next species. 142. NYCTICORAX MANILLENSIS Vigors. PHILIPPINE NIGHT HERON. Nycticorax manillensis Vigors, Proc. Zool. Soc. (1831), 98; Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1898), 26, 162; Hand-List (1899), 1, 198; McGregor and Worcester, Hand-List (1906), 34. Nycticorax manilensis Oates, Cat. Birds' Eggs (1902), 2, 125. Cuak-cuak, Bohol.