{"id":6558,"date":"2017-12-24T11:44:19","date_gmt":"2017-12-24T19:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/?page_id=6558"},"modified":"2017-12-24T11:44:19","modified_gmt":"2017-12-24T19:44:19","slug":"2014-01","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/published-writings-and-art\/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine\/2014-01\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 \u2013 12 Great Blue Heron"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We all know what a great blue heron looks like, what it does for a living and where it lives \u2013 so I won\u2019t rehash that here. Looking like a graceful and meditative tai chi expert, these elegant birds often walk shorelines or docks searching for small fish. They are a study of refinement and polish, long delicate throat feathers allow water to drain off the bird without creating splash circles that might scare a possible meal. The official bird for Seattle, herons nest in treetop stick structures mostly in cottonwoods. Far above ground predators, in the past decade, a new threat is now creating havoc with Salish Sea herons \u2013 bald eagles.<\/p>\n

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Back from endangered status and the threat of DDT, bald eagles have become almost common here, and other birds are now dealing with the big bully in the neighborhood. Gulls that used to nest on small offshore islands are now using city roofs to escape marauding eagles. Great blue herons too, with eagles invading heron colonies where they chase off the adults, then land and help themselves to the eggs or young. It\u2019s difficult for any admirer of wildlife to deal with this, because both birds have their place here, both are beautiful, both health-indicators at the top of an ecosystem we\u2019d like to think of as healthy. But it\u2019s obviously not! Eagles may be doing this because there are fewer fish, fewer waterfowl they once relied on. How eagles and herons eventually coexist no one knows, but at the moment, it\u2019s going in the eagle\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

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Larry Eifert paints and writes about wild places. His work is in many national parks across America \u2013 and at larryeifert.com.<\/p>\n

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We all know what a great blue heron looks like, what it does for a living and where it lives \u2013 so I won\u2019t rehash that here. Looking like a graceful and meditative tai chi expert, these elegant birds often walk shorelines or docks searching for small fish. They are a study of refinement and … Continue reading 2014 \u2013 12 Great Blue Heron<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":6453,"menu_order":90,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6558","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6660,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6558\/revisions\/6660"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}