The Nankeen night heron (Nycticorax caledonicus) owes its unique origin to a Chinese cotton export – a cotton cloth originally produced and heavily exported during Victorian times from the Chinese city of Nanjing (historically Nanking). Early ornithologists, including John Gould in 1846, named the bird after this textile because the rich, cinnamon-rust colour of the adult heron's back and wings perfectly matched the shade of Nankeen cloth. Its most striking feature are its oversized, straw-yellow eyes – highly adapted for low-light vision, making them perfectly equipped to ambush slippery prey in the pitch black. Widespread across the Australasian and Oceanic regions, it is also commonly referred to as the rufous night heron because of its distinctive reddish-brown colour.
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