Hastings Park Wonderfully Productive
But Deadly Nest is Replaced
The Hastings Park eagle nest has had a following for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately the area around the Park, bordering Burrard Inlet on the North and containing a couple of small fish-filled lakes, horse & agriculture barn areas has great eagle food sources but relatively poorly structured young trees. These entice the eagles to build a nest but usually the nests fall before the season is complete.
Our nest monitors and followers had to go through a sad past 5 years of a chick falling from the nest. This has now, we hope, been resolved favorably. The new Vancouver Parks Board Avian projects coordinator got us a Permit to build a new Artificial Nest in the eagles’ favorite tree. The only real difference between their consistent efforts and ours is that we could lock into place many large cedar branches to form a fine foundation. We then built up another layer of long lasting cedar branches and then filled in with cottonwood sticks to give what we hope will be satisfactory to the eagles. We will likely know this within a week of their arrival back from migration – not too long from now. We hope they will undertake the final interior design. Then the piece de resistance will be them lining the nest with mosses and lichens in January and February before egg laying.
The Salish pre-nest building Ceremony
to Honor David Hancock’s 65 years studying Bald Eagles
David, totally surprised by local Salish Chief with a Blanket and a Salish name Ceremony: David received the treasured Blanket and Salish Name “Yakula” White-headed Eagle. This was an incredible honor by a peoples spiritually associated with eagles.
Historic Nest Tree
This is the historic Hastings Nest Tree – this contained at least 4 different nests each of which fell or partially fell killing an eaglet. Here in 2020 the huge trunk from the tree to the north forms the basis of the new 2019-2020 nest. This was taken down & we built the new nest in the crotch above.
The Hastings Park Nest being built: Sept 11, 2020
a. The sturdy cedar branch frame
b. Stage two – filling in the frame.
c. The finished nest – waiting the eagle’s home touch!