Category Archives: Bald Eagle

Walking toward Lucky Me

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The little dog and I have reached the junction in Treadwell Woods where we always turn left. It’s marked by the tall cottonwood with an eagle’s nest. The other trail leads to Lucky Me. No eaglet calls for food. No adult looks accusingly over the lip of the nest at the poodle mix. A corona of backlit cottonwood leaves circles of the nest. Too bad there isn’t a white-headed adult to wear the green crown. 

I’ve never been able to coax Aki away to take the right fork at this junction until today. Today, she is more than happy to follow a dog friend and its human right to take the road less traveled. It’s a trail dappled by leaf shadows that leads to a beach of pulverized ore from the Ready Bullion mine. The mine closed more than 100 years ago, leaving behind the beach, buildings, mine carts, bricks and crockery. Rusting wheels and rails emerge like mammoth tusks from the shifting ore sand.

All of the bird action is taking place at the waterline. Two sandpipers—a greater yellow legs and a grey tailed tattler—feed in the shallows until driven off by the wake of a Seattle-bound barge. An adult bald eagle munches on a crab carcass and then flies over to a small stream to bathe. Just offshore a raft of surf scoters descends on of school of bait fish. 

Forest Light

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The forest light seems particularly pure this morning. It confuses my old digital camera and sometimes, even my eyes. It turns strands of spider webs into strings of prisms. Light and birdsong are the only things keeping us in the woods. Normally, Aki and I would have reached the beach by now, where we might see arriving humpback whales or orcas chasing incoming king salmon. 

            The tips of fragile ferns have already unfurled, marking the end of spring. While Aki reads her pee mail, I check the blue berry bushes for blossoms. We and the bears will have to look elsewhere for our berries this year. 

            When we finally reach the beach, it seems empty except for kids carry white plastic buckets. With rubber boots on their feet, they splash through the shallows, bent over, looking for shells or memories. 

Salmon and Birds

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An adult bald eagle circles over the meadow where Aki and I stand. I check to make sure that the little dog is too close to me to be eagle bait and then turn to watch the eagle. Low angle sunshine lights up the eagle’s white head and enriches the chestnut tones of its wing feathers. Taking advantage of its two-meter wingspan, it lets the wind carry it higher over our heads. 

 When the eagle’s mate calls out from a nearby spruce top, it glides toward a nearby one, hovers for a second over its apex, and lands, talons first on a thin branch. The tree top sways with the eagle’s sudden weight, rocking the big bird back and forth until it settles. Once stable, the eagle watches a yellow legs sandpiper quick stepping across the shallows of a small pond.  

Earlier in the walk we watched two guys from the hatchery installing net pens for holding king salmon smolt. While the we watch the eagle watch the sandpiper, we can hear the sound of salmon smolt being pumped from a tanker truck into the pens. After four months in the pens, the smolt will be released. They will make their way down stream to the ocean. 

Adult king salmon, released from the pens over four years ago, will pass the smolt as they swim upstream to the pond. The big salmon, some weighing more than ten kilos, will wander around the pond, trying to find a way to satisfy their instinctual urge to spawn. A few might follow silver salmon upstream to their spawning gravel. Most will be caught by fishermen or bears. 

Nothing is Wasted

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Several hundred Canada geese are chowing down along Eagle River. The biggest concentration is on a large tidal meadow. I have to take care not to step on their scat as Aki and I skirt the meadow.  

A smaller group of poke around for food on mud flats now exposed at low tide. Mallards waddle around them until an eagle flies over, flushing the ducks to flight. The geese ignore the eagle as they jab their beaks into the mud. What are they eating, little dog? Aki never heard my question. She’s turned a sand bar into her own race track, running circles around its parameter for the sheer joy of it.

 Near the river mouth, wave erosion has destroyed part of the trail and halved the size of a small copse of spruce trees. Because they root in glacial silt and sand, the spruce trees have smooth, straight roots. Tlingit weavers have come all the way from Ketchikan to harvest the roots, which they use to strengthen strands of their weaving wool. I wonder where they will find replacement roots when erosion finally wipes away this little forest.

After walking on the beach, I lead Aki across a grass-covered dune and stumble upon the esophagus of a Canada goose. The thick-sided, opaque tube is crammed with small, pink-colored shells. Other shells and a crab claw have spilled out of one end of the esophagus. This not the scene of the crime, which would be marked by a scattering of bones and feathers. I suspect that a raven or eagle was attacked by another scavenger bird while carrying the esophagus in its talons. The prize fell onto dune while the birds continued to scrap. They flew away, allowing slugs to finish what remains.

Out of Sync

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I am wearing my winter coat, which makes me out of sync with the place where Aki and I walk. The crows and eagles are gathering nesting material. They know it is spring. So do the robins and their cousin thrush staking out territory with their sweet, sweet songs. Already the mallards have formed a nesting colony above the high tide line. 

            Aki reluctantly follows me onto tidelands exposed by the ebbing tide. We can hear eagles bickering while they watch us from their spruce top nest. At water’s edge, plovers and other waders walk stiffly on sticky mud. I almost step on a sea anemone. Exposed to the air, it has to keep its green tendril tucked up tight. In a hour, as the flooding tide washes over it, the anemone will release its tendrils. They will flutter like a tart’s skirt, seducing small fish to their deaths. 

            A large raft of feeding mallards panic into light when a bald eagle flies near and lands. The ducks dither in the air for a few seconds and then return to the ground to feed a few meters from the predator. 

Nest Fights

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This morning we have wind-driven rain and a sky full of swarming scavengers. Just a few meters above the tree tops ravens and eagles juke away from and dive on each other. The ravens are making all the noise. Hampered by my rain-spotted glasses I first assume that a raven gang is trying to drive one eagle away from the forest and the river beach it fronts.  After wiping the glasses down with a handkerchief, I can see more than one eagle.

In less than a month, king salmon will rest in nearby river eddies before making their final push to the spawning grounds. Pink, chum, and silver salmons will follow. For most of the summer, the nutrient-rich carcasses of spawned out salmon will drift up onto the beach. Ravens and eagles tough enough to establish nests along the beach will have more than enough food for their chicks.

Eagles are doing most of the nest building. One eagle tries to keep a clump of old man’s beard lichen in its beak as it barrel rolls to escape two ravens. A third eagles takes advantage of the distraction to carry a cottonwood twig to its nest site. The members of the two bird clans are having a free-for-all fight over nest building materials. 

Lifting Fog

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Thick fog slowed our drive to the Fish Creek trailhead. But I am not hurry.I want to arrive at the creek mouth just as the fog lifts like a curtain. I’d settle for a chance to watch it tear itself apart on the spruce-covered Douglas Island Ridge. 

            Through a screen of alders, we can hear mallards cackling on meadow of dead grass. Wisps of fog rise up from around the ducks. A large raft of male golden-eye duck have taken over the pond. The most aggressive drakes try to drive the others away from a huddle of hens. On a quieter edge of the pond, two other golden-eyes paddle with the tranquility of an old married couple. 

            The fog thickens when we leave the pond. I start slow-walking my way toward the mouth, doddling often, seeing little. Several song sparrows cheer us with their short, but sweet melodies. Aki shows me the patience of a care giver at a senior citizen center. 

            The fog defeats my attempts to photograph with its gray cloak. Two eagles appear out of the muck, then disappear into a tangle of spruce limbs. Then the wind rises, stirring the occluding ground layer as the sun burns away fog that seconds before had blocked out view of the Mendenhall Towers.  

Eagles in Love? Mallard’s Distain?

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Hundreds of mallards have gathered on a tidal meadow pockmarked with thawing ponds. We would not have spotted them if one of the drakes hadn’t croaked, “crack, crack, crack” in the tone of a mean-spirited bully. He could be commenting on a karaoke performance at the neighborhood pub. I stop myself from anthropizing when I spot two eagles just setting onto limbs of a nearby spruce tree.  

 Aki and I are returning from the mouth of Fish Creek. It was barren of birds except for a half-dozen bald eagles. One of the big predators gave itself away with a long, plaintive call. I wondered whether the eagle was singing the blues until another eagle flew across Fritz Cove and landed in the singer’s tree. 

A hundred meters away, two other eagles launched into the air. They circled above Aki and I. One chased the other, who was making an uninspired attempt to escape.  When the pursuer thrusted his talons toward the pursued, she quickly headed toward a spruce tree. In a few seconds both birds were sharing the same spruce limb. 

I watched the performance, hoping to see the eagles complete their mating dance by locking talons and tumbling toward Aki and I. Another eagle, perhaps frustrated by love and not interested to seeing such a public display of affection, flew out of his spruce roost and landed at the edge of the cove. While he sulked yet another eagle called out for a lover. 

Corvids

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It’s a day for corvids. I’m talking about the birds, not the virus. Three Stellar’s blue jays watch the little dog and I pass under their spruce tree roast, looking as unaffected by our passage as a Buckingham Castle guard. Without so much as a scolding from the diminutive corvids, we continue down the trail to salt water.

The usual mallard gang hunts for food in the Fritz Cove shallows. One hen bursts off the water and flies over to a nearby kettle pond. She stands in shallow water that reflects her beauty back to her. The fit mallard looks sleek with not one feather out of place. While I wonder what flushed her from the salt water, the rest of the mallards from her raft panic into flight. Looking up I see the cause—a bald eagle that just landed in the top of a nearby spruce. 

Aki, not a fan of eagles, is happy when we move down the trail to the mouth of the stream. There, a murder of crows fidgets from one bank to the other and back. Some find purpose when they spot a solitary raven skulking on the branch of a driftwood tree that has become stuck in the middle of the creek.

I expect a noisy squabble. The crows raise their young in a nearby forest. They consider ravens trespassers. But only a few of the crows land on the raven’s driftwood hang out. Even these seem more curious than outraged.  

Raven Convention

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The tide is out at Sandy Beach. A pair of adult bald eagles are hunched in the branches of a tall cottonwood tree. The stiff breeze powers through their neck feathers, giving each a bald spot. If the eagles turn around, they could watch convention of ravens convening near the waterline. 

            Several inches of new snow brighten the beach above the high tide line. The snow is dimpled by the prints of dogs and their humans. A raven flies toward Aki as she investigates a promising set of prints. It flies low over her head. The startled dog leaps in surprise as the raven circles her and lands two meters away. Is this the same raven that tries to play tag with the poodle-mix at Sheep Creek? If not, work must have gotten out in Raven’s ville that Aki is quick to take the bait. 

            When Aki ignores the raven, it circles me a few times, lands on the sand, and struts away like the rich man on a Monopoly board. Three different ravens squawk as they fly over the channel. They fly across the Slide Creek avalanche chute, now burdened by the runout of a fresh avalanche.