February 20- Our brush with The Law!!!

In the words of one of our idols - the famous yet not- so- stable Adrian Monk, Here's what happened: Kay read that the Blue Herons are seen in their nests as early as February. We decided to go to the Brecksville Reservation, where there is a heron rookery right off the Towpath. I looked on Google maps, to see where the heronry was in relation to the trailhead. We noticed that the heronry was to the west of the trail, the river and the train tracks. We decided to walk up the tracks to get a close look at the heron's nest and possible see some early herons. We walked up to the heronry and saw the nests, but no herons. Kay mentioned that one of the nests was much larger, and that a couple years ago she had seen it and had thought it was an eagle's nest. We turned around to walk back down the tracks towards the parking lot. I noticed an eagle off to the east, fairly far away, and then Kay spotted a second one. We took some photos. That's when we saw the two park rangers standing on the tracks watching us. At first we thought that maybe we were in trouble for walking on the tracks. They walked towards us and asked us for our ID's, which we had left in the car. They asked us how far up we had walked and what we had seen. We proudly said, "Two eagles." They told us that we had walked right past a sign stating that the area around the nests was closed, due to the eagle's nest. They asked for our Social Security numbers, and made us wait while they checked up on us. We told them we never saw the sign, which was true, and that maybe it needed to be more prominent. We told them we are very pro-eagle, and would have never done anything to jeopardize a nest. they let us off with a warning!
At that point we went back to the car and drove south to the Vaughn Rd. area. Kay set up her blind near the river, and I walked north. Once i got about halfway back to Brecksville, I called Kay and asked her to pick me up there when she was done. I walked all the way up to Brecksville and then kept going - on the towpath- to the point where I could see, across the river and across the tracks, the eagle's nest. I also saw signs asking for quiet along this section of the trail. Took lots of photos of one of my favorite bridges that towers over this section of the towpath.


Looking for herons
Careless, didn't see the signs
Eagles, forgive us!