North Minneapolis Heron Rookery Turmoil — Birdchick

I headed out a week prior with a friend who had never seen the rookery to scout for the event. While there, someone mentioned a bald eagle was trying to build a nest on the island. I didn’t see anything that looked big enough for a bald eagle nest. Someone pointed to what they thought it was, but in my scope I could see that it was three heron nests clustered together. But there were about three dozen great blue herons working on nests and about 50 cormorants settling into the nests. I wondered if by the time the egrets arrive if there would be any space left for them.

A bald eagle flew in a couple of times, but every time that they did, the peregrines nesting on the nearby power plant chased them off. I’ve seen eagles hang out on the islands in early spring and once the peregrines are ready to start nesting they don’t tolerate them. I thought it was exciting that the herons were moving back and maybe a few were as the Marshall Terrace Park rookery was getting crowded.

The next day, I headed to Mississippi Gateway Regional Park at Coon Rapids Dam. Pre pandemic there was a rookery up there, but the birds abandoned it. After I finished my program, staff and volunteers told me that herons at started building a nest up there again.

I did a segment on Friday morning on MPR talking about the event and the peregrines chasing off the eagle. My friend Nina messaged me on Instagram saying that they eagles were trying to build a nest and had some great shots of the peregrines coming in for an attack.

Saturday morning I arrived for the event and my friend Lisa who is now running it came over and said, “There are no herons. There are no cormorants.”

Sometimes birds are gonna bird. It reminded me of one of my first tours to go see about 40,000 tundra swans and only four were present. I headed own to the river. All the cormorants were in the water and not on the nests. Herons were nowhere to be seen, not even loafing on the shores of the Mississippi River. The island was covered in empty heron and cormorant nests and one much larger nest with two bald eagles perched near it. Indeed, the eagles had built up the nest. I wondered if the peregrines decided to leave them alone or got tired of chasing them and decided to nest elsewhere.