Date: 8/24/26 8:21 am From: Ken Miracle via groups.io <chukar28...> Subject: Re: [IBLE] Golden Eagle vs Great Blue Heron
What a cool encounter no matter which Eagle it was. A Golden Eagle there would be less likely than a Juvenile or Immature Bald Eagle. Also Bald Eagles are much more likely to be harassing Great Blue Herons and Ospreys. Could you see a golden nape on the eagle? Or was it close enough with legs extended to see if it had feathers all the way down the legs to the feet a Golden has that but not a Bald. If there was any white on the undersides of the bird where was it. An immature Golden will have white patches at the base of the primaries in the wings and at the base of the tail an Adult Golden will not have any white. The beak on a Golden is also shorter/smaller than the more elongated beak of a Bald Eagle. A Juvenile, hatch year, Bald Eagle will have a very dark head and body with varying degrees of white in the underside of the wings and tail but the white will not be in the same places as an immature Golden.
I spent quite a bit of time over there volunteering with The Nature Conservancy in my first 10 years of retirement. Most of the time out of their camp in the canyon stretch. Yes I did get a chance to fish once in a while.
For reference here some photos I have taken of Bald Eagles at the age when they are most often mistaken for Golden Eagles.

> On Aug 24, 2026, at 7:51 AM, John Schmidt via groups.io <jsecho03...> wrote:
>
> Saw a pretty incredible, dramatic episode while floating the South Fork of the Snake River the other day. That river is loaded with Bald Eagles, Osprey and other large birds. So seeing two large birds flying towards us wasn't out of the ordinary... until they were almost upon us and we saw, what I'm pretty sure was a Golden Eagle attacking, at high speed, a Great Blue Heron. At the last second, maybe 40' above our raft, the eagle broke off the chase and the heron flew safely away. One of those "did we really just see that?" moments.
>
>
Ken Miracle
<chukar28...>
208-570-2780
"Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God" 2COR 3:5
