Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve | Things to do in Chilliwack

A river otter. This is so cool. He's just sitting on a log looking around. I did not expect to see this. I'm so excited. Today we're at the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve in Chilliwack and we're here to learn about and admire Canada's largest and most distributed heron. Yeah and thankfully they've cut these little holes in the fence here so we can spy on them during nesting season but you're not allowed to go in where the nests are because we don't want to disturb them obviously. Yeah so let's see what we can see. The Blue Heron Nature Reserve is a 1.5 hour drive east of Vancouver at 5200 Sumas Prairie Road in Chilliwack. Parking is free but limited. There's a lot more people here than I expected Yeah it's very busy. We lucked out and got like the last parking spot so that was good. It's so nice and warm don't you think? It's not bad. Maybe it's not bad. It's not bad. Like it's nice in the sun. It's a little bit... there's a light breeze that's a little bit chilly. It's like practically tropical. I wouldn't go that far. We're entering natural habitat. We may encounter wildlife. I certainly hope so. We found our first bit of wildlife. Let's see the turtles. Around some of the areas of the reserve you'll notice some trees that have chicken wire around them and the reason for that is because there are some beavers in the marshes around here and beavers have to chew constantly pretty much to keep their teeth that are constantly growing filed down. The staff here are protecting some of the trees from the beavers with wire. We were just wondering what time of day they're most active like when they leave their nests to go get food or whatever but we don't really know. If you happen to be a heron expert let us know in the comments. Right now they're mostly in their nest just kind of chilling. So I don't know but... Let's take another look. Yeah. Shh be very very quiet. We're in the bird blind and we're watching for the herons. I guess I don't need my sunglasses in here because it's so dark. A bird blind. It's basically just a structure that is hiding us so that we're not kind of disturbing the wildlife beyond it. So you can see we've got some little peep holes. So I kind of feel like a peeping tom on nature. So we're going to sit here for a few minutes, take a look, watch for some birds. We've already seen a couple fly in and out. We're not too far away from the colony and yeah so we'll see. Uh yes in the distance over here I see... I can't even tell you how many nests. There's so many. There's quite a few. Oh there's one flying right above us. Okay so here's a little bit of trivia for you. Great blue herons, Canada's largest and most distributed heron, are found of course all over Canada. But what's unique about them here in the lower mainland of BC is that they stay here year round. All the other herons across Canada in the winter migrate south to warmer temperatures and warmer climate. Except ours because it's temperate enough and so they can stay here. These herons are nesting in the tops of a large cluster of cottonwood trees and so they're really high up. Kind of helps limit predators. However they still do have predators. So raccoons can still climb up into the tops of those trees to steal the eggs and eagles are actually a top predator around herons as well. The eagles though, and there are a lot of them around here, what the staff around here have found is that this particular colony has one eagle's nest really close to it and that eagle is really territorial and prevents all the other eagles from preying on these heron's nests. So he's got the top pick but thankfully the herons only have to contend with the one eagle. Interestingly herons also will have a different mate every season. I guess that helps, I don't know, diversify the gene pool. And there are a lot of planes around here today. We're not too too far from the local Chilliwack airport. It's a beautiful sunny day and everyone with their small little Cessnas is out practicing. Not that that's a bad thing. Jay's a pilot. He likes to get up there too. So checked out the bird blind. Now we're gonna go as far as we can on the loop trail and see how close we can get. We got our answer pretty quickly. This is as close as we can get. We're on a little scavenger hunt. You're supposed to find as many things that you can that don't belong. And you know how I love my scavenger hunts. So we've already found a spoon and a shovel and now I'm coming around this bit here and there's another spoon and a giraffe. This is kind of neat. It's kind of fun. Like it's like great for kids. And Mel's. This is so cool. He's just sitting on a log looking around. We did not expect to see this. I'm so excited. He doesn't even know we're here. Oh my gosh it's so cute. Oh he's kind of looking towards us now so I think he might smell us. That's so cool. The bird bath. I don't know if you can hear that behind us. The ducks are just having like a spa day. It's quite quite hilarious. Really quietly we've noticed a lot of different birds. It's kind of like a birder's paradise. Yeah they'll come right up to you. Yeah and like just so many different species. Like we can't even we've seen birds we've never even seen before or even have any idea what they're called. If you're moving too fast you'll miss seeing them because they're so small. Some of them anyways. And sometimes you just need to hear them in the brushes. Yeah that's how we found like these little ones that were foraging for insects on the ground and they happened to cross our path because we were standing still enough. Okay we are just lucking out on wildlife today. We're walking along the path and all of a sudden Jay says stop wait and we both freeze and he's got the camera looking at something. I thought maybe he finally got a shot of a snake but no it's not. It's a little bunny just chowing down hanging out here on the near the side of the trail and like Jay must have just like eyes of an eagle because this little bunny is just so well blended in. I heard it before I saw it. It seems pretty tame because even though we've just been talking it's still just sitting here. It's pretty darn cute. Spring is in the air folks. Spring is in the air. We brought hot drinks with us today to enjoy while we walk around. The nests are active from March to July so if you come a little bit earlier in the season like we did end of March could be a little bit chilly. And speaking of the weather you will be spending the majority of your visit outside so make sure to dress appropriately and even though it is outside dogs, horses, yes horses, and bicycles are not allowed on pretty much all of the trails except for the one center trail that connects to the rotary trail along the river. And if you enjoyed this video we'd really appreciate if you could give us a like and subscribe and hit that notification bell. It really helps us with our channel. Thank you very much. And in the meantime keep on living the life you imagine. Herons interestingly mate with a different bird each year. No wait oh that sounds weird. Okay what did I talk about hun? The... What? Yeah yes uh maybe? I can't tell the sun's in my face.