Twelve years ago, I wrote a post about birds and pilings (blog.kootenay-lake.ca/?p=8842). In it, I noted that many birds like the wooden pilings and often rest on them and even nest in them. For these birds, wooden pilings provide a refuge from many predators and a good view of the lake and adjacent shore. For people close to the lakeshore, this also provides them with a entertaining view. On wooden pilings, I have seen many ducks, geese, raptors, woodpeckers, swallows, corvids, herons, kingfishers, and gulls. What is not to like?
But some time ago, people began to shift from wooden to metal pilings which have both the advantage of lasting longer and disadvantage of being unfriendly to birds. The latter has a conical top upon which the only bird I have seen capable of sitting there is a kingfisher. Now, many years later, I watched another bird try: a Great Blue Heron. It wobbled, couldn’t get a grip, and left again about one second later. Sigh.
A juvenile Great Blue Heron fails to perch on a metal piling and promptly leaves.
