We slip off Chicken Ridge before the trash truck arrives, before the guys at the Capital building start chipping bricks off its façade. Aki and I drive out to the Fish Creek Delta because it is sunny and perhaps early enough to catch some animals in their relaxed, post-dawn state.

Just after leaving the car I spot a young, male Sitka blacktail deer feeding on new grass along the creek. The sound of rushing water must have masked from it the sound of our old Subaru bumping into the parking lot. Aki, busy checking all her pee-mail messages doesn’t notice how the deer’s long black tail bisects its tawny haunches. It jerks slightly each time a car passes over the creek bridge. We won’t see the deer on the return trip.

The purple lupine flowers are peaking beside shooting stars with fading magenta petals. Frost covers lupine leaves in areas of the meadow yet to feel the morning’s sun. Our presence discomforts the resident mallards and surprises to flight a lone, red-breasted merganser. But the song sparrows seem more interested than frightened as they settle on the tops of nearby trees and bushes to sing.

It’s once again low tide so the eagles are out on the exposed flats, bickering at their children like human parents do before the coffee kicks. We walk through columns of mosquitoes without getting bit. Instead of feeding, they form and reform abstract ghosts at the edge of the alder forests. With the rising heat of the day, they will switch from artists to vampires. The little dog and I will be long gone before their transformation.

Aki and head out early this morning to see the Sheep Creek delta in low angle sun. Well, that is why I dragged the poodle-mix from her bed. She settles in quickly once we leave the car. We are four hours from low tide so the wetland feeders—crows, gulls, ravens, and one eagle—are hunkered down near the water. Only the eagle is animated. It bursts from a spot along the creek after being attacked by gulls. Three or four of them chase the eagle in an aerial dogfight twenty feet above the ground. In minutes, the bald eagle is back its spot along the creek. Minutes later the gulls, bright as angels in the early morning light, finally drive it off. Raven, shinny black in full sun, watches with apparent detachment. I wonder who he roots for.

At least two score of bald eagles lounge on exposed tidelands. More watch from perches in the spruce trees we pass under. Most of the mature birds, the ones with white heads and tails, chill. The immature ones fly out and back from the trees, sometimes getting into a tussle with other young birds. They are all waiting for the hatchery truck to finish the transfer of young king salmon from truck to an enclosed pen that now floats on the waters of Fish Creek Pond. It’s as unnatural as humans in character costumes standing in line for days before the opening of a Star Wars movie.

The released salmon smolt that survive eagles and predator fish will swim into the Gulf of Alaska. Six years later, maybe thirty pounds heavier, they will return to the pond, circling it until caught by a sport fisherman or they die of natural causes. A few will follow the pink and dog salmon up Fish Creek to spawn but nothing will come of their effort on the unsuitable gravel.

Those birds not looking for an easy meal, like green winged teal and sand pipers work the estuary waters. I surprise a northern goshawk while it eats a shrew. It bursts into the air and over the heads of some eagles roosting near the top of a spruce tree. The goshawk is ignored by the eagles but not a crow, who chases the bigger bird from its sky.