For a number of years there was a modest GBH rookery in a ravine within a couple hundred yards of our home in the North Beach neighborhood in Seattle. I'd estimate that some years there were up to a half-dozen occupied nests. In good years the noise from the young was impossible to ignore at times. Over the course of a couple years, however, harrassment by other birds seemed to wipe out the colony. Some of the battles involved crows and possibly other smaller birds, but what really caught our attention were the bald eagle attacks. These were always noisy and sometimes violent and semi-savage affairs.

I have no idea if herons and eagles are routine antagonists or not, but their lifestyles do seem to this fledgling birder to have enough features in common to make some conflict unavoidable.

Paul Johanson
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