This morning Aki and I broke up a party on the moraine. Bald eagles rather than teenagers filled the guest list. Teens wouldn’t be partying in this a heavy downpour.  The eagles sought fish, not booze.

The party had just about run its course when we arrived. Two mature bald eagles screamed at each other until one chase the other out of a shared roosting tree. Perviously, they both flew down the trail to rest in the same cottonwood tree. This left three immature eagles, each a confusion of brown and white feathers, who always look bigger to me than the grownups. They held spaces in trees above a ruptured beaver dam.  Late returning silver salmon and the trout that eat their eggs and flesh must pass through the gap.

Two of the young eagles flew off, leaving one very stubborn teenager in control. Even he eventually flew off, but only to a cottonwood a hundred meters up the lake where he turned his back to us and defecated.