Category Archives: Bald Eagle

Ice Dragon

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In her poem, “The Mendenhall Glacier” Ursula Le Guinn describes it as an ice dragon. Why didn’t I think about using that metaphor for the glacier? It’s seems so obvious this morning with fragments of clouds hanging above the ice like steam rising from a dragon’s nostrils. Le Guinn, who lives in Oregon, may have only seen the glacier once, and that as a cruise ship visitor. The little dog and I have seen it many times. Yet all I have been able to come up for a descriptor is “river of ice.” Well, she has published 50 books.

 

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While I grumble to the little dog about metaphors, a bald eagle roosted in a nearby cottonwood tree lets go a ribbon of scat that arcs out of its rear and twists down to the ground like a dragon of poop. Aki looks at me like a dog tired of dragon metaphors. We push on toward Nugget Falls, now fully charged by recent storms.

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Three mountain goats graze near the falls. Two, a female and kid, move very close to the water on a steep pitch of glaciated rock slick with mist. One slip would send them into the torrent. But they safely reach a patch of willows, which might be succulent with sap sent out during our false spring.

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A woman with an 18-inch telephoto lens on her high-end camera appears behind me on the trail. When she points it at the two goats, the larger one stops to look at us. Its kid disappears into a hollow. I look down at Aki, tiny and quiet beside my right boot. She can’t be the reason for the goats’ defensive move. Between the goats and us the falls pounds into the lake. That fact alone should reassure the mother and child that we can’t harm them. Has the she goat learned to identify humans pointing rifle-like objects as threats?

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Sheep Creek Delta

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Happy Saint Lucy day little dog. Aki looks at with me like someone who had to watch a trusted friend eat warm saffron buns with his morning coffee while all she had to look forward to was a breakfast of dried kibble. Fortunately she forgot about my neglect by the time we climbed into the car for a drive out to the Sheep Creek delta.

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Using our car’s magic blue tooth connector, we listen to music recorded on my phone. This morning that device doesn’t allow me to choose songs. Instead we have to settle for an eclectic mix tape as the phone shuttles through my music library. After The Pogues finish a song about brown eyes, Yo Yo Ma starts playing one of the more obscure Bach cello suites. We reach the trailhead before the phone can shuttle over to the Texas Tornados. As if she doesn’t care for Bach, Aki bursts out of the car and into a heavy rain when I opened the door.

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It’s high tide so most of the delta is under water. What seems like every mallard in the greater Juneau area hugs the beach or sleeps on it. When I close the car door, one of the mallards makes a sarcastic chuckle. Crows have crowded onto the mid-channel navigation aid. More of their murder stand on a nearby gravel bar even though it is covered with a inch of water. When the tide turns in a few minutes and retreats from their gravel bar, the crows will fly to another one closer to the beach that was dry when theirs was wet.

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We won’t see or hear an eagle during our beach walk. But on the drive home the car will pass under a trio of them jockeying for position over a beach with a brace of stubborn ravens. The center of their temporary universe is something dead. I look on the beach but see only rocks and rubble.

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A Little Gift

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The little dog and I are pulling into the Fish Creek trailhead parking lot. And as if nature thought we deserved an early Solstice gift, it is not raining. Aki, you just never know what climate change will bring us. The pastel pinks of sunrise color mist rising off the pond. As if to gild the scene, a heron flaps through the mist to land on a pond-side spruce.

5The weather guys forecast heavy rain for tomorrow, which makes this break in the storms that must sweeter. But it is not all beer and skittles for the little dog. A shotgun booms across Gastineau Channel making Aki cringe and look back to make sure I know what I am doing. The gunshot drives a gang of Canada geese into a noisy flight. I wonder if they are giving warning or hurling curses down upon the hunter.

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It’s a day for finding bones. I almost step on a slim seal bone and later spot the large leg bone of a moose. Eagle feathers littler the beach grass. All these things were deposited here by a powerful flood tide.

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It is also a day for crows. The Juneau murder must have roosted in the small forest that at the end of the Fish Creek spit. They spill out over the water of Fritz Cove, their black bodies looking like music notes inked onto the mottled sky.

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Blue Skies or Gray

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Aki and I are walking on a trail just a few miles from yesterday’s snowy paradise. This place received rain while the moraine was blessed with more snow. But it has beauty and even a little drama to offer. There’s the sound of eagle complaints from raptors perched on riverside spruce. Three other eagles fly in tight circles over the river. I suspect some late arriving silver salmon are drawing the crowd. It could be a deer carcass. We followed the recent tracks of one to the confluence of Montana Creek and the river.

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All the eagle activity makes Aki nervous. She stands, almost touching my leg, and squints down river. She calms down when we return to the forest where snowmelt drops rain on both of us. Aki is as excited today, as she would be on a sunny summer Sunday. The little dog uses her nose to discover smells buried under the snow. I have to wait often for her to catalogue the best ones. Gray skies or blue, pee smells the same to her.

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Despoiling the Crime Scene

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Three eagles stand still as hunting herons at the edge of Fritz Cove. Between the eagles and me, fat flakes of snow fall, softening the birds’ outlines. A cloud of ravens flit in and out of the scene. Food, and lots of it, must be near. Otherwise the eagles wouldn’t tolerate my presence or that of the ravens. Just offshore a harbor seal treads water, only its head shows above the surface. I remember a stripped deer carcass that Aki and I stumbled on when walking by this spot last year. Then a far off shot reminds me that it is still hunting season.

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Wanting to leave the birds to their cleanup work, I drive on, passing a large raft of surf scoters moving in unison to form shapes on the waters of the cove like a high school marching band between half of a football game. From a distance they look like a group of composed individuals. But with the help of the telephoto lens, I can see the frantic efforts they make to maintain the group’s shape.

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After watching the scoters, I drive to a North Douglas Island trailhead and take the little dog for a walk. So little snow makes it through the forest canopy that I wonder if the storm is tapering off. I stop wondering when we reach a pocket meadow where falling snow collects on the gnarled bark of mountain hemlocks and bull pines. I try, once again, to take a picture that shows what my eye can see: tens of thousands of snow flakes floating down against a background of dark evergreens.

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA                  We pass back into woods where the blood of a recently killed animal stains the snow. Small bits of the prey animal remain so the kill was recent. Canine prints trample the area making it difficult to determine if this is the work of a wolf or raptor. While I bend low to search for clues, Aki urinates on the evidence.

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More Like Early Spring

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No No No No November, tomorrow brings December. The calendar claims that we are sliding into winter—that it is only three weeks away. But as rain continues to melt November snow, it feels more like early spring. Aki and I walk through the Treadwell mining ruins. The lovely snow is almost all slush on the trail. The little dog works to avoid stepping into the little swimming pools of melt water that fill each boot print on the trail. But neither the rain nor the slush discourages her. When I feel the cold water soak my socks I check to see if the poodle-mix wants to make it a short day. She is already down the trail, smelling more signs left by her dog buddies.

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To avoid the slushy trail, I lead Aki out onto the beach of crushed gold ore that fronts the ruins. Here the trail is drier but we’ve lost the protection from the wind driven rain that the ruin’s trees provided. I’d like to stay and enjoy the harsh beauty of storm clouds above the channel but retreat back into the trees before my hands are too cold to operate the camera.

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Later, from a protected spot at the edge of the woods, I will watch two bald eagles circle above the channel as if it were summer. Nearer, a brace of loons will dive on baitfish that have collected in the collapsed glory hole. Aki will play tag with a wet wheaten terrier. But when we reach the trailhead, she will be the first to the car, waiting with impatience, for me to open the door.

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Their Own Little World

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It’s late in the morning. The earth has rotated enough to let the sun shine full on Lynn Canal and the mountains that line it. Waves whipped by yesterday’s storm slam onto the False Outer Point beach. Fresh snow flocks the tall evergreens that form the foreground for the mountains. The scene is stunning and as romantic as a Christmas card.

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Romance is not something on Aki’s mind today. She dashes up and down the trail using her nose to read recent history. A young couple drops to the beach. Apparently unaware of anything other than each other, they almost walk into the frame of a picture I am taking of Spuhn Island. He wears jeans and a light jacket in a drab color popular with young men in Juneau. The wind tousles his hair as he points with a bare hand at the rocky point where people fish for king salmon each Spring.

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The man’s date walks uncertainly on the uneven beach rocks, taking as much care not to fall as she did assembling her outfit. A pony tail of washed hair escapes from a hole in the center of her knit cap, bouncing on the back of her flattering jacket as she slips and slides over a patch of icy trail. Neither looks up as a mated pair of bald eagles flies over their heads. They do briefly stop to take a selfie with the glacier and its cohort. Then, they slip back into the tight little world they maintain with their smiles.

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First Snow

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This morning snow has made Juneau’s streets slick so the little dog and I are leaving the car parked. Instead of a trip out the road, we walk down to salt water and catalogue how many plants have been caught out by the storm. All the ones in our yard have gone to ground except the Sitka rose. The rugosa, developed in the Southeast Alaska town of the same name, still has some green leaves to catch the new snow.

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Aki is a bit frantic in her sniffing, as if she fears the snow will wipe out the pee mail system before she has time to check it for messages. This slows our progress down to the channel. There the snow obscures our view of Douglas Island but not the bronze statue of a breaching humpback whale. It looks like is about to leap onto the Douglas Island Bridge.

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Aki throws on the breaks when I try to lead her onto the new tidelands walkway. So I carry the little poodle, a pathetic bundle wrapped in a red sweater, under one arm and soldier on. Her strike ends after I set her back on ground on a sidewalk we have used before many times. Just below us, a bald eagle with the white head and tail of a mature bird seems to sulk as snow whitens the brown feathers on its back.

 

Not Enough Patience

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Aki and I have just reached a beach on the backside of Douglas Island. Across Stephens Passage, morning sunlight floods the beaches of Admiralty Island. We are still in shadow. A bald eagle flies over us and lands near its mate on a spruce tree. They greet each other in their complaining way. Just offshore a harbor seal works through a line of small surf. It’s round head slips above water once, twice, and then disappears. We won’t see it again.

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A flew white clouds float above Admiralty but otherwise the sky is clear and blue. I scan the channel in hopes of spotting a whale but none spouts. Without sunlight to warm us, the little dog and I are starting to feel the cold. But, I can’t make myself leave the beach and the comforting sound of small surf hitting the rocks.

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Frosted brush lines the trail back to the car. Unseen spiders have recently woven basket-shaped webs in the crotches of hemlock or willow twigs. The morning’s rising temperature is melting the frost that had settled on the net webbing during the night, leaving tiny drops of water to cling to the silk.

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In half-an-hour, the sun will be high enough to reach the spider webs. It will make the little drops of water sparkle until they fall to the ground. But neither Aki nor I have the patience to wait.

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Before the Mirror Shatters

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After enjoying our first sunrise for what seems like months, I drive with Aki out to the one place without morning sun: the Mendenhall Glacier. The sun will have to rise above the shoulders of Thunder Mountain before it can warm the trail we walk on or make Nugget Falls sparkle. That won’t be much before eleven, when we will be back on Chicken Ridge.

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Why then, Aki might ask, are we out here shivering in the twilight? If she did, I’d remind her that she is not shivering and there is light striking the glacier and the Mendenhall Towers that rise above it into blue sky. But we are both too distracted by eagles for conversation.

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Attracted here by spawning sockeye salmon, five eagles bicker near the waters of Steep Creek. One with better luck or eyes tears away strips of flesh from a dead salmon. Behind the feeding bird, the calm waters of the lake reflect the glacier and Mt. McGinnis.

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When the sun clears Thunder Mountain to bath everything in strong light, it will also bring a wind to riffle the ice-free portion of the lake, shattering the glacier’s mirror.

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