Category Archives: Bald Eagle

He Promised

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This week’s storm is at the volatile stage. Wind gusts tear up and then coalesce the cloud cover.  Wind driven rain strikes Aki and I as we start down the Outer Point Trail. Just a few hundred meters in, shafts of sunshine hit the forest floor. Leaks in the damns of overworked beavers pour onto the trail where it rounds their pond. Good thing for them that the storm is weakening. Good thing, too, for Aki and I. The rain-swollen pond now covers part of the trail with boot-high water. If the rain doesn’t slacken we won’t be able to use one of our favorite trails.

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The tide is receding when we reach the beach but the causeway between Shaman Island and us is still underwater.  At the water’s edge an immature bald eagle rests on a rock. Two mature eagles bicker at each other from their perches on the island. The immature bird is watching a small raft of ducks fly back and forth over the sunken causeway.

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After the immature bird flies away, I walk toward it’s rock. Aki is slow to follow. I think of a recent BBC post of a bald eagle lifting a fox in the air.  The eagle’s talons dug into a rabbit the fox was carrying and not the fox itself. But the blow snapped about the fox’s body as if it were a rag doll. Looking at my reluctant little poodle-mix, I wonder it she accesses our computer while her humans sleep. (http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44250472/fox-catches-rabbit-then-eagle-swoops-in)

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Sunshine floods Stephen’s Channel between Shaman and Admiralty Islands even though it is raining. The resulting rainbow forms a low, multicolored arc over the water. I remember how, according to the Bible, God filled the sky over Noah and his family with a rainbow to commemorate His promise to never again allow the total flooding of the earth. I think about our weatherman’s promise of an end to the rain by mid-week. I wonder if the beavers will be upset or relieved when the rains stop.

A little Quiet Please

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Just as Aki and I move out of the alder thicket and onto the beach, a common loon sings. I haven’t heard that melancholic call for years. The loon, with it’s ring of white vertical neck stripes, hurries on the water toward another loon. I think one of the birds called again but can’t be sure because of the arrival of two teenage girls. Weighed down by backpacks and looking at the screens of their phones, the young women’s conversation, a typical adolescent combination of judgmental slur and insecurity, obscures that of the reuniting loons. Aki agrees to wait until the back packers reenter the forest where the old growth trees will absorb their noise.

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While waiting, I watch the original loon and two others swim in formation and then dive on fish. All are adult birds. None sing but I welcome the silence. After giving the backpackers some space, I lead my little dog into the forest and then climb a headland covered with bog forest of alder and mountain hemlock. It leads to another beach where, from the sounds, I believe that scooters hover just off shore, large dogs bark and play, and young boys scream out their joy of being alive in the woods.

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Aki and I hike to the edge of this new beach and watch two border collies swim in the bay while a coven of small boys runs about on the gravel. Someone is chopping wood for the campfire that sends a large plume of gray smoke skyward.   Aki doesn’t argue with my decision to turn back.

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After re-crossing the headland we leave the trail and drop down onto a pocket beach. Magically, no noise beyond the headland reaches us. The beach fronts on a small channel. At one end of the channel, eagles dry their wings while perched at the top of evergreens. Another eagle flies toward them from the other end of the channel, then executes a wide turn and returns to its perch. One of the eagles it was heading for starts to screech. Aki and I leave.

 

Small Birds and Shooting Stars

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“Oh,” is all I said. But it was enough to spook a great blue heron to flight. The bird and I surprised each other. It was wading in a small pond. I had just climbed onto a dike that bordered its fishing waters. For a few seconds I could see the surprisingly large swell of its belly before the heron’s big wings lifted it into the air. In several more seconds, the bird was more than halfway across the meadow.

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Three eagles that had been bickering over someone in the meadow grass also took to air. But a robin froze like a statute at the top of a young spruce. Later a swallow, after bouncing it chest five or six times on the pond surface, gazed at me from a perch on the thinnest branch of a bare alder tree.

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This morning only small birds posed for us. But shooting stars and lupines made up for it.

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There Might be Whales

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I didn’t expect much from this quick walk on Sandy Beach. But at least three bald eagles were screaming at each other when we reached the beach. One had fallen into the old glory hole. It took only seconds for it to struggle up onto a rock occupied by another eagle that screeched apparent disapproval at the soggy bird.

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The tall dorsal fin of a male killer whale rose above the gray waters of Gastineau Channel. A female whale surfaced next, sending up a plume of exhalant. Next to the female swam a young whale. They and the rest of the orca pod moved slowly up channel towards Juneau, hunting king salmon on their way to the hatchery.

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In a half and hour someone in one of Juneau’s mini-high rise office buildings might look up from their desk and see the pod of whales swim past. Even though it is not uncommon in May for killer whales to chase salmon up the channel, the office worker will probably shout down the hall to let other people know that the whales are back. They will snap a few photos with their phones and resume their workstations.

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When Aki and I head out into wind driven rain I am greatly tempted to walk her around the block and return to our warm, dry home. But then I think, there might be whales.

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Clever Crows and Dancing Eagles

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Is there any color more calming than green? If Aki has an opinion on this, she is keeping it to herself. We just left an intensely green old growth forest and stand at its edge, watching the local crows hunting through rock weed for food. They might be crushing the shells of hermit crabs or figuring out ways of opening tightly closed shells. I’ve seen then rip mussels from pilings, drop them when twenty or thirty feet above a concrete sidewalk, and pick meat from the broken shells.

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Beyond the crows, a small raft of harlequin ducks splash and squeal like toddlers on the playground. Aki, who has little interest in ducks or crows, stands with the posture of someone about to run out patience. She wants to return to the forest. If she expects a dog contact, she will be disappointed. It’s early on a rainy morning after a long stretch of sunny weather. Most of the Juneau trail users are home, happy to have an excuse to stay in their dry homes nursing a second cup of tea or coffee. We won’t see anyone on the way back to the car.

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Calmed by my time in all that rain-washed green, I barely notice a cloud of eagles that hovers over Fritz Cove while we drive down the North Douglas Highway. Twenty or thirty of the big birds jockey for position over a dark spot on the water like gulls over a ball of panicked herring.

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Thinking that they might be drawn to a feeding whale, I pull over to watch. Whales, like Stellar seal lions, are sloppy eaters. Gulls often hover over them, hoping to clean up the scraps. Some the eagles drop toward the water then pull skyward with empty talons. But no bubble-feeding humpback crashes out of the water, maw opened wide.

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The party apparently over, the eagle cloud lifts into the air and moves toward our car. Soon they are circling over my head, performing a dance with moves too complicated for me to understand. Fifty feet away, one mature eagle squats in the road verge looking wet, and to me, a little disgusted with the flying eagles. Is it too old to play or too wise to chase shadows in the water?

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Forgiveness

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The ducks and geese are gone, leaving the tidal meadow looking deceptively empty. But Aki and I flush warblers and sparrows with each step we take along an earthen dike that borders it. In the pond formed by the dike a young beaver swims back and forth, stopping only to slap its tail on the water. I tell it not to worry, that neither the dog nor I have any intention of taking up residence on the pond.

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Minutes before, two Sitka black tail deer had walked across the North Douglas Highway as we slowed to turn into the trailhead parking lot. One, a young male with nascent antler buds took the lead. The female deer followed, more interested in eating new growth grass than our car. The male took up station at the tree line and stared at me. I knew he would break into the woods if I left the car so I didn’t move.

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After circling the beaver pond, the little dog and I push on and round the tip of a peninsula where we have seen so many mallards in winter. Eagle cries and crow cackles come from inside the old growth spruce forest on the peninsula but I can’t see one of the noisemakers. On the backside of the peninsula a mature bald eagle stands behind a flat-topped rock that is covered with barnacles. Bright sunlight makes its head painfully white. Even though there is food to find on the surrounding wetlands, the eagle stands still behind the rock, as if it were a pastor practicing for the Sabbath homily. As we approach the eagle, a whale surfaces and exhales.

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Another bald eagle flies, with talon’s extended, toward the preacher, which screams at the late arriver. I expect a fight but am treated to an apparent offer and acceptance of forgiveness. The newcomer bows its head low and approaches. In seconds it’s lowered beak is almost touching the preacher’s talons. After the other eagle lightly touches the supplicant they separate.

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If I were in a more skeptical mood, I might have described the scene as the reunion of an unfaithful husband and longsuffering wife. I could have portrayed a hungry eagle scolding its mate for not delivering some food. But it is early summer and we are enjoying the fourth day of warm sunshine after a long, wet spell. The meadow grass will never shine as green. Purple lupine flowers show near the tree line and the columbines can’t be too far behind. I shouldn’t be surprised that I saw love and forgiveness in an eagle’s actions.

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Morning Entertainment

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The Sheep Creek delta seems empty this morning. No gulls or ducks or even crows wade in the creek waters. No heron stalks small fry in the shallows. A clutch of gulls float in Gastineau Channel under the eye of the adult bald eagle perched in the superstructure of navigation aid no. 2. If it weren’t for a large raft of scoters on the channel waters it would be stone quiet.

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I imagine that our other local waterfowl are feeding on their summer grounds on the outside coast. Later, when the creek fills up with spawning pink salmon, clouds of screaming gulls will make it difficult for Aki to hear my summing whistle. But today, she has no such excuse. I’m in the no man’s land between the splash zone grass and the channel. The little dog stands in the grass, using her mental powers to call me back. She wants us to walk down the beach at the edge of a grass-covered dune, which is rich in dog smells.

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This drama repeats itself on every visit to the creek so I keep walking, knowing that she will eventually trot out to me. When she does, we walk toward the nav aid to check out the eagle. It ignores us, only leaving its perch to sweep out over the channel to fish.

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Aki’s been a good sport about what she considers a silly detour so after a few minutes we walk over the grassy dune where she can scent and pee to her heart’s content. At the end of the dune the nav aid eagle is now perched in an alder tree. Maybe, for the big raptor, we are the morning’s entertainment.

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First Light Breaking

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First light is breaking after the storm as Aki and I enter an old growth forest. We won’t see another man or dog on the walk to the beach. The light reaches deep into the forest and makes translucent the green skunk cabbage leaves as they muscle up through the waters of the beaver pond.

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Reaching the beach we discover that the minus three-foot ebb has exposed the causeway to Shaman Island. Eagles feed on land normally covered with ten to twenty feet of water. I usually have to coax Aki onto the causeway. But today she follows at my heals.

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It’s a tough morning for ravens and eagles. The crows that roost on the island harass them. As we leave the causeway, a raven flies over us, crows pulling at its tail feathers. Other crows do the same to a deserting eagle. To the north storm clouds lift to reveal the glacier and Mendenhall Towers.

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The Morning After

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I could hear them bickering when we reached the Fish Creek Pond. At least two bald eagles were having words. Aki ignored the noise to concentrate on all the good scents left along side the trail. Neither of us paid much attention to the incense-smell of the balsam poplar leaves opening to the morning sun.

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We eased up onto the dike that forms one edge of the pond and walked toward the creek. A mature bald eagle and an immature one perched close to each other on a bleached-out driftwood log. Another eagle stood waist deep in the creek, as it he decided it was great day for a bath.

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The wet eagle must have been pulled under by a steelhead trout. Using its wings for lift, it managed to escape the creek waters and skip over to the shallows where it could stand. Raising its wings again, the big bird waddled onto a gravel bar. The scene had the feel of Sunday morning coming down. The two dry eagles watched with passivity of the hung over while the other one looked like it had no idea how it ended up in mid-stream.

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Now the little dog and I move down to the creek mouth where two Canada geese alert the world of our presence. A flood tide has covered the wetlands and backed up the creek. As I focus my camera on the glacier, the geese explode off the water and fly a low flight path over Fritz Cove.

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Eagles Along the River

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Aki and I usually keep moving on our walks. The little dogs starts whining if I take took long examining something. But today on a trail that leads to where the Mendenhall River empties into Fritz Cove, she is quite content to lay relaxed in the sun.

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She normally spends the entire visit to this trail on alert. The eagles that often perch just above us in beachside spruce make her nervous. Since she is just light enough for them to carry her away, I share her concern. But today she rests at the feet of another human friend, an older man that she watches over when he joins us on our walks.

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There is good reason to be happy. We sit on sun-warmed rocks out of the wind. Over Fritz Cove a cloud of shorebirds flashes dark and light as they suddenly change directions. Ducks and scoters stream up and down the river, made nervous by the eagles that scream from their spruce perches. Nearby a murder of ravens cackles and clucks. Other eagles fly toward us from the exposed wetlands on the other side of the river. One, still covered in the brown feathers of an immature eagle,carries a fish in its talons. Just after it lands two mature birds land next to it. In seconds, the immature bird flies out and over the river without its fish.

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