Living Next To The Grocery Store

 Great Blue Heron Rookery -- Columbia Valley National Wildlife Area. Wilmer, BC

Photo by Larry Halverson

The larger nest on the right belongs to a Bald Eagle. Eagles are known to chase herons off their nests and prey on the hatchlings left behind.  So for this eagle it must be like living next to the grocery store.

Biologists say that in some cases eagles are pestering the herons so relentlessly that some of them even abandoned eggs and chicks and forsake their traditional breeding grounds.

For more information see biologist Marlene Machmer's report, which looks at the potential links between the failure rates at heron breeding colonies in the Columbia Valley and disturbance by Bald Eagles and humans. 

Cottonwood forests of the Columbia Wetlands provide key habitat for a number of wildlife species. In 2008 - 187 active heron nests were recorded in the East Kootenays