Category Archives: Bald Eagle

Tiny but Fierce

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Aki showed indifference while I pulled on my bike gear and left the house this morning. I didn’t hear her howl when I rode out of the yard and down the steep hill into downtown Juneau. She seemed calm when I took a post-ride shower. But her patience and understanding ran out when I filled a mug with coffee.  Okay little dog, we’re going.

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I crack open a window to distract Aki and drive over to muskeg meadow. It should be empty of people. No one I know would spend a sunny afternoon hunting and pecking on the muskeg for ripe cloudberries. Only expats from tundra towns or Scandinavia seek them out.

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At first Aki refuses to follow me off the gravel trail.  She has learned to avoid the normally wet muskeg. But thanks to our recent drought the meadow is dry. She can spring over it in search of interesting smells. After plopping a cloudberry into the container, I look up and spot my little poodle-mix legs up on the muskeg.  With the look on her face of an aficionado with a mouthful of perfect ice cream, she rubs her back on something that must smell like doggy heaven.

This is why I choose to ride my bike to Sheep Creek this morning rather than take you there in the car.

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That morning, I had heard the scream of gulls before reaching the creek. They fought for position on gravel bars and places in the stream full of holding salmon. A dozen bald eagles held a meeting on the Gastineau Channel beach. Already dead salmon—the kind that dogs love to squirm in—were pilling up on the beach.

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In mid-stream, a lone Bonaparte gull landed on a partially submerged rock. While she screeched from her rock, a dog salmon slapped her pulpit with its tail.  The little gull flew off and dive-bombed an eagle as it ripped flesh off a dead salmon. Tiny but fierce bird.  Kind of like Aki.

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Justifiable Noise

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The Outer Point woods are quiet. I’ve come to expect silence when we enter them early in the morning. Aki is the most animated thing in the forest. She winds on and off the trail tracking something of great interest. The sun has yet to reach the beaver dam as we pass it but I can still make out the pale reflection of blue sky among the pond reeds.

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Eagle screams break the silence as one of the big birds flies over our heads. I hear a doleful song that sounds like a loon calling for its missing mate.  Another eagle screams outs and flies away. Aki and I head toward the beach and closer to the source of the despondent call. When it sounds again, I realize it is a woman calling for her missing dog. A male voice joins the woman’s but he is calling out to a different dog.

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The couple had camped at the edge of the forest. Sometime during the night, their dogs disappeared. They spread out into the woods and called for their missing pets.  It takes five of their shouts to disturb to flight two eagles that had been feeding on the tidal flats. Two more shouts force a roosting eagle to fly over to Shaman Island.

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Until we stumble across the squirrel, we will hear the people searching for their dogs. I will want their calls to stop or at least figure out a way to ignore them. But I am a dog owner aware of the many ways harm can come to a dog in these woods. I keep Aki close as we loop back to the car. A few hundred meters from the trail’s end something that sounds like a congested rodent scolds us. When I stop to investigate, a squirrel climbs out on a nearby branch and continues its lecture.

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We would have never have know of this guy’s presence if it had kept quiet. I wonder what evolutionary edge squirrels gain by revealing their position by chittering. Knowing I will not get an answer to that question, I wonder if the squirrel is trying to tell us where to find the missing dogs. More likely, it is just complaining about all the noise.

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It’s Salmon All The Way Down

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We see the four eagles before spotting a salmon. One of the eagles is tearing flesh from the flopping fish. The other three have spread themselves out on the gravel bar.  Each of these is hoping to snag the next salmon that moves out of the current to rest in the lee of the gravel bar.

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Down river, another quartet of bald eagles bickered over a different salmon. Eight eagles and one only two salmon might indicate a problem. There should be hundreds, if not thousands of dog salmon moving up the river now to their spawning grounds. I pray that the fish are just late.

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If they have any spiritual beliefs, the Eagle River black bears might be appealing to their deities. They need lots of fish to get through the winter.  None of the eight piles of fresh scat that we skirted on the river trail contained remains of fish. They were spotted with unripe high-bush cranberries.

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Aki, the health of everything along the river depends on good salmon returns, even the trees.  The salmon could fit in my hand when they first left the river. They need to spend at least a year wandering and feeding in the ocean before coming home to spawn. Some might be five or ten kilos when they arrive. Something or a combination of things—warming sea temperatures, pollution, new ocean predators able to take advantage to climate change—might be threatening the fish upon which so much of rain forest life depends.

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The Usual Posse

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The heavy rain that started Saturday continues to rinse Juneau’s streets clean. Aki and I are seeking shelter from it in the Treadwell Ruins’ forest. Wrapped as I am in waterproof clothing, I can enjoy the rain as long as it isn’t accompanied by wind to whip drops into my face. Aki has only her curly fur and a water resistant wrap. Rain darkens her fur and soaks her wrap but she doesn’t seem to mind.

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Out on the beach, the usual posse of eagles and ravens monitor for suspicious activity. The ravens do this with style, strutting about as if they ordered the weather.

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One of the eagles clutches the metal ridgeline of the old ventilator shaft. It looks like is about to say, “What’s all this then?” The other roosts on the top of a rusting anchor. Both watch Aki run circle around a Bernese mountain dog that has just galumphed over for a visit.

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Waiting Game

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The beaches and bays around Amalga Harbor are places of waiting. Most are waiting for salmon. A protected area just outside the harbor is full of seine boats. Their captains and crew kill time until the next commercial dog salmon opening. The bears that recently left scat on the Amalga Meadows trail also wait for the fish. Salmon stage for the incoming tide to carry them to the top of the waterfall the drains Peterson Salt Chuck. Hungry Black bears will be there to greet them.

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Aki and I walk across the meadow, and then up and over the low ridge that separates the meadow from Lynn Canal. Heavy rain drops plunk and plonk off the trailside devil’s club and skunk cabbage leaves. Tired of waiting for other victims, mosquitoes swarm out of blue berry bushes to bite the little dog and me. Tired of being bit, I speed out of the forest and onto a rocky point.

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In front of us, the seine boats have formed a waiting community. Behind, a half a dozen eagles, including one with cruciform wings, wait on spruce roosts. Others fly circles over the beach. Feeling the place too exposed for the little dog, I waste no time returning to the protection of the woods.

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Sliding Out of Summer

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The understory plants in the rain forest are showing their age. Gone are the clean green days of early summer when berry bush had unblemished, sharp-edged leaves. Insects and disease have scarred many of the leaves and killed others.

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Plants growing on the beach verge also look battered. While some lupines still display a few blossoms, seedpods have replaced most of their flowers.  I find a beauty in the destruction. I find sadness in fireweed flowers because when they finish blooming it will be fall. I want to start a philosophical discussion about these ironies with Aki, but the little dog has moved down the trail to a spot where another dog has recently peed.

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We both miss spotting an immature bald eagle feeding on the beach not ten feet away.  The big bird pulls into the air and flies along a line of beach grass until it reaches the safety of the water. With its mottled feathers and neck stretched out in flight, it looks as ragged as the plants.

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Summer Famine

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There are many reasons why we don’t visit Fish Creek this time of year. All of them are linked to salmon. In a normal year, hundreds of king salmon would be splashing in the creek’s pond. These draw crowds of fishermen trying to snag the big fish with weighted hooks. Chum and pink salmon should be holding in the creek, ready to move upstream to their spawning grounds.  They bring the attention of bears. But today, perhaps because of the disappointing salmon returns, there are no cars or bear scat in the trailhead parking. These absences, plus the fact that the low-gas-warning icon lit up five miles ago cause me to pull into in the empty lot.

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Two ravens guard the footbridge over Fish Creek, hopping slowly down the railing as Aki and I start across the bridge.  I look down at a gravel bar for the expected dog-salmon carcasses and find none.  The ravens must be here to attack a garbage bag that hangs partway out of a waste bin. Above the ravens, an eagle screams.

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A king salmon, already robbed of its silver color by time in fresh water, rises on the pond surface, drawing the attention of an airborne eagle. Nearer to us, two other eagles perch on pond-side spruce trees.  The one with the chestnut and dun feathers of an immature bird appears to take interest in Aki. I think about putting the little poodle-mix on her lead but in a minute we will be back in the trees where she will presumably be safe from eagles.

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A minute later, while we walk down a forested path, the immature eagle flies low over our heads and lands clumsily thirty feet up a nearby spruce. We watch each other for a while and then I follow Aki away from the pond toward the creek’s mouth.  This eagle will follow us to the mouth and back to the pond—with the purposeful casualness of a spy, not the focused intensity of a mugger. After the third eagle flyby I clip Aki’s leash to her collar as the immature eagle settles onto another spruce branch.

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The Feast is About to Begin

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Aki is halfway up Mt. Roberts on an all female expedition. We are in the middle of a heat way. Today the temperature could climb over 80 degrees. I’m trying to sneak in a bike ride before the heat of the day. To get to my goal, Sheep Creek, I have to run a gauntlet of tour buses, vans, and the tourists they haul from their cruise ships. Away from that jam, I can hear the sound of dog salmon leaping out of the waters of Gastineau Channel. They have already run their gauntlet of predators and climate hazards.

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Chum salmon have drawn a crowd of eagles to Sheep Creek.  Female salmon dig shallow ditches with their tails to receive their eggs. Their action draws the attention of males. Two bald eagles eye the action. They can’t harvest the powerfully muscled salmon now. But soon, after the salmons’ eggs are released and fertilized, the dying will begin and so will the feasting.

Like Madrid

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We are early to the woods this morning. Taking advantage of a solstice sunrise, the little dog and I start down the Outer Point Trail just as the forest awakes. I’m reminded of a trip to Madrid, when thanks to jet lag, Aki’s other human and I were able to walk onto Puerta del Sol just as the sun stirred a small camp of homeless awake. Soon men with brooms began cleaning away the debris of the previous day. No opera singer tested her voice but a man strummed a guitar as the sun warmed his stiff fingers.  This morning, Aki I hear neither the operatic thrush nor the happy robin. Only the harsh songs of working birds and scolding squirrels break the forest’s silence.

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When we reach the beach, an eagle stirs from its spruce roost and flies lazily over Peterson Creek, like a vagrant rousted by a cop. All the drama is provided by low angle sunlight that makes the orange and rust colored rockweed glow on the exposed beach.

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Distraction

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Halfway through this visit to the Gastineau Meadows I stop at a place where leaf shadows dapple the trail. The weatherman promises sun and warm temperatures today. Even though it is still morning, I wish I had worn lighter kit.

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Aki sniffs about in a distracted fashion when I start my Tai Chi routine. Halfway through “waiving hands through clouds” she takes up station beside me. She will stay there until I finish with a salute to Mt. Juneau. If he could read my thoughts, Dr. Lam would gently remind me that I should think only of the present. But I can’t help remembering the immature bald eagle that swooped over the little dog and I as we started hiking toward the meadows. The morning sun warmed the eagle’s chestnut colored feathers and shined off its beak.

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