If you’ve never seen a baby heron in its nest, well, you just haven’t been having enough fun. Great Blue Heron rookeries can be hard to spot, but if you know where to look, you can find one at the east end of the Bethine Church River Trail in Boise.
The Trail actually hosts all kinds of birds, from Belted Kingfishers to Great Horned Owls to Bald Eagles.
It’s also home to willows, golden currants, Oregon Grape, cattails and its keystone plant: the Black Cottonwood, along with beavers and Poison Ivy.
Photographer Patrick Stoll has written about all of these species and more in his new book “An Abridged Natural History of the Bethine Church River Trail,” and he joined Idaho Matters to talk about it.