Folks, thank you all for the both erudite and humorous thoughts about
Eagles and heronries, murreries, cormorantries, and so forth. And, Dennis
Paulson is welcomed back to his soapbox! And, no, I can't imagine any
"control" program for eagle predation on other birds. In time, this
situation will stabilize; some passive transitory assistance like
'camouflage screens' over declining murre colonies may be OK, but
protecting sufficient wider-spread/scattered nesting habitat for colonial
populations is better! Yep, I'm a dreamer.
Maureen E2 (me2 at u.washington.edu)
**********************************************separation of messages
On Tue, 4 Jun 1996, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> Maureen, from what I've been able to glean, eagles are the *primary*
cause............ greater and greater problems with heronries. Apparently
both small and large ones can be sufficiently disturbed by eagle presence
to fail...................

It's simply that Bald Eagles are opportunistic predators that will take
anything they can, and nesting herons are too good to pass up. They are
known to prey on eggs and young,
> although I haven't heard whether they take adults. The interesting
> question to ask is "were herons much less common when eagles were more
> common in the region?" I don't think we have any way of answering it, and
> perhaps all we can do is watch the consequences of the eagle increase. I
> doubt if there will be Bald Eagle control programs, no matter how much
> havoc they wreak with the herons, and I can't imagine there's a way to stop
> the interaction.
>
> Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798
> Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352
> University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
> Tacoma, WA 98416
>
>
>