The Heron and the Eagle

One day on the river, I thought I was seeing things. Was that an (immature) eagle and a Great Blue Heron (GBH) standing together on a mud bar? Why, yes it was!

Would an eagle kill a GBH? There have been reports of that happening. I have seen an eagle that greatly unnerved a GBH when it made a number of passes, flying just a few feet above it's head. But the eagle was actually interested in a carcass I suspect it had eaten earlier a little ways down the shoreline. The tide was coming in and the carcass was about to disappear and the eagle wanted to pick around on it a little more. With telephoto compression, these two may not be as close as they appear to be - although they do look close. This mud bar is one of the few areas where I have seen an eagle on the ground and most of the time, it is sub-adults.

The GBH seemed unfazed even when the eagle was flying around.

This shot was taken a while later after the heron had moved on. In context, you can see there were actually a rather large congregation of herons (5) which, for them, is an unusual number close together with the exception of the nesting period (when they nest in colonies) and shortly thereafter, as they teach their young to feed themselves. Once the immature young attain adult size (which is only a few months), it is hard to differentiate between them and the adults.  At least, at this distance.