Category Archives: Alaska Salmon

High Water

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This morning a porcupine watched the little dog and I leave for a hike. This American version of a hedgehog had tucked itself away among the limbs of our apple tree. I probably should have used a water hose to drive it away. But the little guy looked so peaceful, almost saint-like. Besides, at the moment it wasn’t breaking branches or eating twigs. Porky would leave on its own time, before Aki and I returned from today’s adventure. 

            We drove out the North Douglas Highway to Fish Creek. No salmon fought for spawning space beneath the walking bridge. None could hold their own against the rain-swollen creek current. The high water had flushed the gravel bars clean of decaying fish. There was nothing to attract eagles or ravens. When we moved toward the pond I could hear an eagle scream but saw only clouds reflected in the surface waters. 

            A strong tide flooded the creek side meadow, creating a temporary reflecting pond that captured clouds trying to block out the run above the Douglas Island ridge. Two eagles sulked in creek-side trees. One turned its head, as if to ignore us. The other dropped low over the inundated meadow and flew off toward the glacier. 

More Humans Than Herons

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Fisherman have displaced heron on the Sheep Creek Delta. A line of humans with fishing poles lines Gastineau Channel. A cloud of gulls surrounds the successful ones that are already cleaning their catch. Scattered across the delta, eagles watch the action like judgmental policemen. 

            Silver salmon are powering their way against the creek current, driven toward their spawning ground. Aki wants nothing to do with the fish or the fishermen. She dashes down the beach toward a golden retriever. The golden breaks off from playing catch with its owner to run circles around our little poodle-mix. Aki leans into each turn, like a Formula One racer, throwing up sand in her wake.            

 For a second or two, sunshine breaks through the cloud cover that has darkened Juneau skies for a week. When it disappears, I lookdown the channel, to where the southern tip of Douglas Island pushes into Taku Inlet. The forest there is almost painfully bright as sunshine sparkles on the needles of rain-soaked trees.  

Agility Over Size

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We reached Sandy Beach this morning at low tide. A bedraggled eagle hunches on the roof of the mine ventilator shaft. When I look away, distracted by a silver salmon splashing off shore, the eagle flies down the beach and over a resting murder of crows. Since the eagle is heading in the direction of its nest, I assume it is just returning home, tired of roosting in the rain. 

            Four other eagles are bickering with crows when we reach the little bay formed by the collapse of subsea mining tunnels a hundred years ago.  Dive-bombing crows forced one of the eagles off the beach and onto the top of a splintered piling. 

Apparently menaced by a crow a fraction of its size, the eagle takes off. The crow, a much more agile flyer that the eagle, grabs at the eagle’s tail and wing feathers as the eagle makes for a spruce tree roost just over my head. I look around for Aki and find her tucked away safely in the woods.  

Flat Light

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This is going to be a frustrating walk to the mouth of Fish Creek. Aki and I came with expectations of sunshine, eagles, and ocean-bright silver salmon. The weather folks promised the sunshine. We have good reason to expect eagles and silvers. Their presence should be a matter of course this time of year. We will end up having to make due with eagles and aging pinks. 

            Two adult bald eagles roost in a spruce overlooking the pond.  The hump of a spawned out pink salmon male ripples the pond’s surface. With a little effort, one of the eagles could snag the salmon and fly it to a gravel bar for a feed. But they barely flinch when the salmon swims past their roosting tree. 


            Hoping that the eagles have already had their fill of silver salmon, I follow Aki down the trail to the creek mouth. We do spot a run of the creek full of frisky salmon. But we can’t investigate without disturbing two eagles perched on a driftwood branch. The mottled birds look dull in this morning’s grey light. 

            Low clouds obscure our view of the Chilkat Mountains and that of the glacier on the other side of Gastineau Channel. The sunshine currently bathing Admiralty Island should reach the glacier and Fish Creek in a couple of hours. Aki will be home by then, sunning herself on the back steps.  

Eye Wide Open

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Today’s heavy rain must have dampened people’s desire to hike. The little dog and I have the Outer Point Trail to us. It leads us through a silent forest. No birds or squirrels break the quiet. Storm clouds have grounded the airplanes that usually fly over our heads on their way to one of the Admiralty Island villages. The quiet is a reprieve from the noise of airports with their multi-lingual amplified announcements and over-loud conversations that hammered me during the return home from Sweden. 

            Rainwater swells the forest ponds and streams, which threaten to flood low lying sections of the trail. Fat raindrops turn the broad skunk cabbage leaves into a percussive orchestra. The rain forest drought is broken. 

Aki hurries me toward the beach, now partially flooded by a high tide. Half a kilometer away, at the mouth of Peterson Creek, two bald eagles hunch to avoid aerial attacks from a gang of gulls. The eagles screech out protests and then launch a counter attack, abandoning the salmon carcasses they had been scavenging.  

            Late arriving pink salmon fly out of the water, making a noisy splash on their reentry. The heads of two seals and a sea lion appear and disappear above the surface of the water. One of the seals swims close to the shore and lifts its head up and out of the water for a better view of the little dog and I. 

I think of the seals that I saw performing a Lofoton aquarium; how they had their eyes squeezed shut in every photo I took of them. I know that when I look at the pictures I took of the Outer Point seal, its eyes will be wide open. 

Neighborhood Bad Boys

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      Ravens seem to beg to be anthropomorphized. Aki and I happen upon a gang of the teenage-like birds gathered on a beach dotted with pink salmon carcasses. One of the purpley-black birds crouches over an eyeless salmon body, ripping flesh from the fish’s back with its massive beak. The other birds cackle criticism at the eating bird and then take off, making enough noise to scare nearby gulls into flight.  

          The ravens don’t bother a green winged teal or a brace of greater yellow legs that feed in a shallow pond. They ride rising wind currents up and over Fish Creek and then break off into head first dives like WWII fighter pilots descending on enemy bombers. When even this becomes too mundane, they dive bomb a bald eagle, driving it off its spruce tree roost. While the eagle had no stomach for a fight, a crow rises to the occasion and drives off the much larger ravens when they get too close to crow country. 

          The little dog and I walk up the stream, surprised more than once by the loud splashes made by male pink salmon as they fight each other for spawning space. We startle to flight a pair of great blue herons hunting the little fish that thrive on salmon flesh. Squawking like barnyard geese, they move to a nearby pond where another heron is already feeding. 

The Eaglet

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        Sometimes rain forest bald eagles seem as common as pigeons. A few weeks ago over 150 eagles gathered in trees and on the exposed wetlands across from the Juneau salmon hatchery. They were waiting for the next pulse of chum salmon to arrive. Aki and I see one or two bald eagles almost every time we hike in the summer. This morning, while still in the Treadwell Woods, we hear the screeching of the one that hangs out on the roof of the old mine ventilation shaft at Sandy Beach. A higher pitched call comes from a point deeper in the woods. 

          I lead the little poodle-mix toward the later sound. Soon we are at the base of a tall cottonwood tree. White eagle scat is spattered on the understory plants beneath the tree. One of those responsible for the mess sits alone in the nest of sticks its parents built in a crotch of cottonwood branches. It’s an eaglet that has grown out of its downy coat. Fuzzy black feathers cover its head. Soon it will fledge. 

        The eaglet gives us a fierce look and then turns until we can only see its back. Aki and I walk under the tree and then drop down through the woods and onto Sandy Beach. The two resident ravens watch us from atop splinted wharf pilings. Down the channel one of the eaglet’s parents balances on the roof ridge of the ventilation shaft. The other one must be hunting for junior. 

Grotesques

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Aki is due for a bath today. Her other human and I never say the word out loud. The little dog only hears, “Someone is going to get a b-a-t-h this afternoon.” Even hearing the word spelled can send her under the bed. For her bath day walk, I always choose a trail she likes. I don’t have to worry whether she will get dirty on the hike because… 

        On this bath day morning, Aki is trotting along the edge of a grass-covered dune. We walk toward Douglas and Juneau under a blue sky. Behind us in Sheep Creek gulls feed heartily on deceased pink and dog salmon. The birds bicker and flash their wings at each other to protect their share of the hoard. Picked over salmon carcasses line our trail. Bird feathers, seaweed, and beach grass collect around some to form grotesque still lives.

        A line of human fishermen stand knee deep on the edge of the beach. They cast and wait for a strike, as patience as the herons that usually fish along the beach. The fishermen are targeting silver salmon, still ocean bright. Once they enter freshwater, the salmon’s sides will darken. The jaws of the males will distort and hook to form tools for battling others for the right to spawn.

Little Birds Show

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Pink salmon have replaced the chum salmon that tussled in the shallow water beneath the Fish Creek Bridge the last time Aki and I walked over it. Male pinks, with the distorted backs that earned them the nickname “humpies,” charge each other in the stream rapids. Unlike last time, when ravens and watched the salmons struggle, only a flock of no nonsense gulls takes in the show. There is one eagle roosting in a tree above the stream. Soon it will fly off. 

        Expecting to find many eagles and herons on our walk to the stream mouth, I try to rush the little dog. She gives me her “I have important work to do” stare and slows to catalogue trailside scents. Each sniff adds to her encyclopedic knowledge. I’m as impatience as the belted kingfisher chattering over our heads. 

          Several schools of pink salmon wander around a pond connected to the stream. A few hurl themselves out of the water as if that will hurry up the spawning process. Maybe female pink salmon dig an acrobatic guy. No herons wade in the pond shallows. No eagles watch the show. Only gulls float on the pond, looking for scraps of already dead fish. 

        On a spit covered with fireweed stalks and meadow grass already succumbing to fall, gangs of sparrows search the ground for food. The little brown birds spring up like grasshoppers when we walk down the trail. No eagles wait for us at the stream mouth, just more gulls and one raven flying over the creek delta as if it were an eagle. 

Back on Home Ground

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        Last night Aki was waiting for me when I walked off the MV Le Conte. She begged for attention while I lifted my bags off the ferry’s luggage cart and carried them to the car.  With the luggage secured, I lifted up the little poodle-mix and promised that tomorrow we would go on one of usual adventures. 

        Aki didn’t need any encouragement this morning to follow me to the car. We drove out the North Douglas Highway to Outer Point Trail. A deer hunter’s truck was parked near the trailhead but we wouldn’t see him or anyone else on the trail. I could have postponed the walk until the sun burned through the marine layer. But I wanted to use the trail at first light even if that light was gray.

        The Stellar’s jays were quiet when we walked through the forest. But we could hear the gulls way before we reached the beach. An eagle has just flushed them to flight. Another eagle waddled along the mouth of Peterson Creek, waiting for the day’s first pink salmon to ride the tide toward their spawning ground. A large school of pinks jumped and splashed near the creek mouth.

          During the night the tide had ebbed to expose the causeway to Shaman Island. Gulls covered the path, breaking off in twos and threes when the little dog and I invaded their comfort zone. Fog filtered our view of the glacier but not the Chilkat Mountains. They were tall enough to catch the first rays of bright light after the sun climbed above the clouds.