Category Archives: Bald Eagle

Wet Bird

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This eagle tells you everything you need to know about today’s weather. He squats in the top of a hemlock tree, rain-soaked wings spread out to dry. He will hold that pose for the ten minutes that Aki and I explore the false outer point beach. I poke at a spray of purple beach pea flowers, snap a photograph of them, pet the dog, and look up at the eagle. He holds the same pose. I talk with Aki’s human sister, watch her skim stones on the calm water, pet Aki, and look up at the eagle. I smile at a brown junco with the nerve to land on a drift wood log a few feet away and stare at us. I squint out toward Shaman Island at the head of a curious seal, apparently wondering why we linger on the beach. The eagle still hasn’t moved. That’s how hard it rained today.P1050913

Yin and Yang

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The dogs looked miserable even though they reclined at the feet of doting owners next to bowls full of food or water. In the sidewalk seating area of an Oregon brewpub, they coped with 100-degree heat by sleeping. Tired from a morning bike ride along the Pacific and full of pub food, I felt like joining the pups. Aki, who even though she likes to sleep next to a heating vent in winter wouldn’t know what to do about the heat.2

The next morning, while getting in one last bike ride before our return to Alaska, I thought about the flexibility of man and dog. In urban Oregon, dogs stay home while their owners ride crowded public transport to inside jobs. Each must look forward to the nightly reunion. They have many walks in the rain and some in snow. But one sniff of the tea roses perfuming the bike paths and you know that they have a gentler climate than Juneau. They have shopping, wineries, fancy beer parlors, and quality cell phone coverage. We have Costco, a hometown brewery, and ready access to the woods and sea. Orcas chase salmon and sea lions in front of Juneau. What predators work the streets of Portland?3

This morning, back in Juneau, I join Aki for a walk on the Rainforest Trail. Soft rain collects on the path-side plants. It soaks my pants when they brush against the cow parsnips leading over the trail. How nice, little dog, to be soaked by rain rather than sweat, to walk through air cool enough for comforting fleece. Aki, who rarely has to pant, would probably agree.4

Green Calm

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The weather service issued a heavy-rain advisory for this morning. Mendenhall Lake could rise two feet and Montana Creek is likely to flood. In my mind I measure how high the arctic tern nesting colony is above the normal lake level. The colony just might survive a two-foot rise but not much more. If birds can experience fear and grief the terns, who migrated here from Patagonia to nest and feed, must have heavy hearts. 3

Knowing that there is nothing we can do for the tern colony, I decided to drive Aki out to the Eagle River. From under a bed the little dog watched me assemble camera and rain gear, showing no interest in joining the expedition. She listened to rain tattooing our roof as I pulled on rain pants and jacket. Just when I was about to walk out the door without the little dog, she stretched and trotted up, tail wagging. Maybe the rainy weather made her sleepy.1

The rain stopped by the time we reached Eagle River. But the sky stayed gray. Aki jumped out of the car and headed up the trail. I followed behind. We entered the forest where green understory plants were already taller than me. The time of flowers has passed and that of colorful berries is weeks away. The forest only offered varying shades of green. But envelopment in such a green world calms like a day spa can never do. I must have slowed my pace in response because Aki stopped often to stare back at me with what looked like concern.2

Later we crossed a riverside meadow rich in flowers. Blue lupine, magenta shooting stars and nagoon berry flowers, yellow buttercups, red columbines, and wild strawberries thrived. I remembered summers passed, when we watched chum salmon swim up the tiny watercourses that drain the meadow. At high flood tides, the salmon would swim across the meadow and die where the retreating waters left them. That part of their bodies not carried away by carrion birds, stayed to fertilize the meadow flowers and berry brush.4

Ravens in the Rain

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Rain or boredom seems to have depressed the Treadwell eagles this morning. Even though it is low tide and therefore the best time to find food or carrion, two mature bald eagles are glued to the tops of splintered pilings. Two more hunker on the beach near the water. The inclement weather doesn’t seem to have bothered the ravens. They fly back and forth over the glory hole, harassing first the piling plunked eagles and then returning to the beach occupied by those squatting on the sand.2

Aki finds a cache of dog kibble that has been sprinkled on the top of a foot-high piling. Someone, perhaps the sprinkler, placed a flat stone over the kibble but Aki manages to tongue out a morsels before I convince her to stop. Two ravens land on nearby pilings to watch. I have little doubt that they will have the stone off and the kibble down their beaks before we make it back to the car.3

Catching The Bottom

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All fishing trips start early in the morning, many before the breakfast caffeine can clear the mind. This one begins at the relatively late hour of 7 A.M. Aki remains home, looking forward, not doubt, to a planned visit with one of her best dog friends. If fishing was the only point of the trip, I should stay home. Thanks to a dramatic fall off in the local king salmon returns, that fishery is closed. With better weather we would make the one hour run to Lizard Head, where King fishing is legal. But neither the sky nor the weatherman gives much hope of calm seas.2

In a normal year, the waters of the bay we fish out of would be full of king salmon fisherman, human and sea lion, as well as the occasional whale. But today, I only spot two eagles. One roosts on top of a commercial salmon troller, confident that it won’t put to sea until after they reopen the fishery. The other eagle, still acquiring its species’ trademark white head and tail, stands at the water’s edge, looking at its reflection as if basking in his beauty.1

Later we will try for halibut by dropping weighted line onto a reef off of Hump Island. Humpback whales and Dahl Porpoise will fatten in the herring-rich waters. An adult bald eagle will pluck a bait herring off the water close to our boat. We will catch only the ocean’s bottom with our hooks. But we really won’t be there for the fishing.

A Complex of Clouds

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Aki and I walk on the spine of a long, gray gravel snake stretched out on the forest floor. On either side, the white flowers of food plants—crab apple, high bush cranberry, and Labrador tea—break the monopoly of forest greens. The snake will lead us to a beach where white gulls harass eagles away from food exposed by the ebbing tide. But my eye will be drawn to Lynn Canal where a complex of clouds, from white to dark gray, water the sea.1

Rounding False Outer Point

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It’s the seventy-third anniversary of the Normandy invasion that eventually led to the end of World War II. Aki and I are rounding False Outer Point during an outgoing tide. Nothing about the scene inspires memories of D Day except the eagles that make my little dog nervous. During our approach to the point, an adult bald eagle, white head bold against the spruce where it roosts, dives toward the water with talons extended in the fishing position. But it carries nothing back to its roost. Aki gives me her “are you crazy?” look but still follows me around the point.3

A flood tide forced us to rock climb around each headland the last time we made this trip. That day ended for me at the local urgent care facility where a doc-in-a-box stitched closed a cut I received after slipping on razor sharp shale. Today, with the tide on the ebb, we have an easy passage. Four eagles make lazy circles above the beach after the point but Aki doesn’t seem to notice. The resident crows notice us. One takes up station on the top of a driftwood root wad and polices our passage back into the woods.1

Tidal Table

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Tlingit elders teach that when the tide is out, the table is set. This morning, the tide is clearing the table as Aki and I walk toward the mouth of Fish Creek. From the sounds being made by eagles, crows, and gulls, last call is too early. Across Fritz Cove, a noisy cloud of white forms over Mendenhall River as displaced gulls and kittiwakes rise from an inundated sand bar. The cloud rises, falls, swoops, and settles on a still dry section of the wetlands.1

Rain falls through sunshine. In the American South, they would say that the devil must be beating his wife this morning.  A rainbow appears in the skies above Admiralty Island. The wetland bird noise drops. Perhaps they accept the bow as a manifestation of the tide’s promise to withdraw from the wetlands after the crest.

The rainbow has no affect on the crows and eagles. Inside the spruced island near the creek mouth, they bicker like kids on the playground. Bald eagles glide in and out of the forest, some to fish over the cove, others to perch on a mid-channel navigation aid.

3Two eagles, one wet, the other dry, sulk on the point separating fish creek from its pond. A minute earlier, one had crashed, talons first, into the pond water, struggled with something that appeared to pull it underwater. The then wet eagle released its prey and used its wings to lift out of the water for a short flight to the beach. Somewhere in pond, a sore backed king salmon drops into deeper water. .4

Back in High School

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4It’s hard not to feel derided by the ravens and crows infesting the spruce forest that edges the Mendenhall River. The mere presence of Aki and me seems to put them in a foul mood. I experience emotions not felt since visiting a neighbor bar when in college. (Image me in school sweatshirt and jeans walking past a table of shipyard workers in machine-oil-stained overalls). The corvid choir takes me further back to the time of high school dances with their rigid hieratical order. The other birds along the river reinforce my feelings.3A sole, immature bald eagle was exiled on our side of the river when Aki and I first broke out of the forest. Across the way, on a bar exposed by a minus four low tide, the big men and women on campus—a gang of mature bald eagles—reigned. Gulls, crows and ravens kept a respectful distance.1

We learned the crows’ true social status when a single gull drove them off the bar, across the river, and into the trees where they now hurl insults at my little dog and me. As is the case of the high school dance status, in the bird world size does not guarantee dominance.

2I’ve seen a sole arctic tern drive off a mature bald eagle and a raven do the same. I’ve watched a crow harass a raven into leaving a tasty morsel of food. Today, the Mendenhall River crows, having been embarrassed by a diminutive gull, are putting us in our low place.

Wetland Islands

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Like a magician tracing a ley line, Aki confidently trots a straight path through wetland grass too tall for her to see over. An eagle does a fly over and two others perch. One of these occupies a stump in the middle of Lemon Creek. The other rests on a light standard that arcs over two lanes of traffic on Egan Expressway. Without knowing it, Aki is heading in the right direction—toward one of the odd little islands that seem to float on a tidal grass sea.2

Fall and spring, foliage on the islands’ balsam poplars work like gold leaf on an icon to draw the eye. Spruce, alders, and elderberry bush squeeze onto the islands with the poplars. They all send roots into a mix of glacial silt and gravel carried there by the creek. Savannah sparrows nest in the grass bordering the islands. One of those diminutive birds flies to the top of an elderberry bush to watch us pass. I wonder what the tiny thing would do if we came near its nest. The severe look it flashes me as I pass within a few feet could not form on the face of a timid beast.3