Eagle Eats Great Blue Heron

[lowangle al]

My place in Pa is a wildlife magnet, with beaver, otter, eagles and deer almost daily sightings, along with regular coyote howls and yips. A friend who was visiting yesterday sitting on my couch saw a heron coming in for a landing across the lake. A few minutes later he asked what that white thing was over there. I looked and said it was an eagle and he was eating something. When I looked through binoculars I could see that the eagle was eating the heron which appeared to still be alive. As we were getting ready to go out for a paddle the eagle continued to eat the heron. In about a half hour the eagle flew off. We paddled and fished our way over to the kill site and examined the mostly eaten heron. About the only meat left on it was at least one leg. I gathered up some feathers and took its feet which I hope to dry and preserve. I was out again this morning and the eagle came back for the leftovers.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Wow! I've seen eagles go after ducks before, but never a heron. I wonder why that is. We have a lot of herons here. I have a few heron rookeries I like to visit every year. Fascinating pterodactyls.

 

[lowangle al]

Yeah, the eagles and herons always coexisted on the lake and I had never seen them go after ducks or geese which I would think would be an easy meal. I figured that they preferred fish and didn't hassle the birds and hopefully not my cats. There are new eagles on my lake after one of the nesting pair disappeared last winter, so maybe the new eagle has different dinning habits, or maybe it wanted a hot meal.

 

[stripperguy]

Wow!! I never thought that herons would make a good meal, they’re kinda scrawny…
There’s a small lake near me that I sometimes paddle to see the expansive heron rookery, but the last time I visited, the rookery was abandoned. After discussions with one of my bird watching friends, I learned that bald eagles had moved in, and almost immediately, the herons moved out.

 

[ppine]

Nature: Its not what you think.

Bald eagles specialize in fish, but if they are not readily available they can use their formidable equipment go after other prey. They are opportunistic hunters. I have seen one nail a jack rabbit. That was highly unusual.

Golden eagles are terrestrial and prey on all kinds of things. A friend of mine was following a powerline ROW in an airplane and watched a golden eagle and a lone coyote take down an antelope. That was in western Nebraska.

 

[Mason]

Waterfowl can be a significant component of bald eagles' diet. I've seen ravens kill heron chicks in the nest while the adults were away (flushed). The chicks were almost the size of the ravens. The ravens pecked the chick and then drug it out of the nest, falling probably 40 feet.

 

[Alan Gage]

Pretty cool you got to see that. I wonder if the heron was perhaps sick or injured.

I remember watching a bald eagle fly down and kill a gull many years ago. I suspect that gull was injured as the eagle picked it out of a group and overshot on it's first attack (which gave the gull a head start). The eagle circled around, chased it down in straight pursuit, and snatched it from mid-air.

I regularly see juvenile bald eagles harassing ducks and this summer I saw one chasing cormorants. The cormorants would flea from their perches and suddenly dive into the water like like an arrow when the eagle got too close.

Alan

 

[lowangle al]

I doubt the heron was injured, but you never know. The only thing I’ve seen the eagles eat at my lake were fish, with two exceptions. Years ago my neighbor had a big white domestic duck of his eaten by one. The other was last winter when the lone nesting eagle killed a beaver and pulled it up on the ice to eat.

 

[jdeerfoot]

Amazing. Several times I have come across eagles feeding on road kill. And on trips my fishing trip mates always clean the catch away from camp leaving the cleanings on the rocks for the gulls that seem to come out of nowhere. Several times we have seen an eagle come in and scatter the gulls. It eats its fill and then flies off and the gulls return. Dinner time pecking order.