Aki left Chicken Ridge early with the noisy one and her friend to cross the Shaman Island land bridge while it is exposed by an extreme low tide. I followed out the door soon after to ride my 28 year old touring bike on a 30 mile loop out the road.

On the way I stop at the glacier visitor center to find it thick with cruise ship tourists. Some collect under the covered viewing area where I grab a bench seat to watch the glacier and lake in flat light.  The cruisers pose, backs to the glacier, while family members take their picture. Over the lake an eagle flies erratically toward us. I think about pointing this out to the visitors but they seem content with the big river of ice.

The bird is a mature bald eagle with white head and tail. As it nears I discover the cause of its nervous flight —one tiny tern that swoops and pecks at his giant cousin. The tern breaks pursuit when the eagle passes out of the tern colony’s air space. After seeing something like this you want to at least smile at others who shared it with you. In this sea of visitors no one did. That’s one of three of today’s wonders. The other two involve the tern.

While eagles live here year round the terns must commute 10,000 miles to raise their babies among the ice bergs of Mendenhall Lake. In the fall they and will return the same distance to the tip of South America. So the presence of that feisty tern is a marvel. His  willingness to chase away a large bird armed with vicious beak and claw is a another.