Eagles and salmon… and dippers
It takes a hale and hearty individual to get up in the dark and head out into the teeth of an arctic blast, but Sunday, December 13, two vanloads of us joined Libby Mills as we headed up river in search of eagles. After a round of introductions, we drove to the banks of the mighty Skagit. Early on we were rewarded with views of juvenile and adult eagles perching, feeding and calling.
At mid-morning the sun broke through the clouds and suddenly the eagles began to move! One by one we watched them catch a thermal and spiral upwards, more birds joining the column all the while. At one point seventeen birds were silhouetted against the sky as we looked upstream into the Eldorado basin.
After all that watching we were a little cold, so we hurried back to the van for hot drinks (mmm… mochas!) and then moved down to Howard Miller Steelhead Park. After talking with a few Eagle Watcher volunteers, we moved to the graveled banks at water’s edge. There we saw several chum salmon carcasses in various states of decay as Libby explained more about salmon ecology and how it is inextricably tied into the eagles. Jenny modeled excellent field skills as she sketched and collected data about the carcasses in her filed notes.
We had lunch at the Skagit River Interpretive Center in front of a warm stove and Libby gave a brief slide show while we enjoyed more hot drinks. The shadows were lengthening and the wind was picking up, so we bundled up one last time and checked out milepost 100 to see eagles, mergansers, and a red-tailed hawk preparing for the night, soaring towards evening roosts. Squeezing everything we could out of the daylight, we zipped up to the Marblemount hatchery to see spawning salmon in the waning light. As trees and mountains began to fade into shapes in the dusk, a hardy dipper sang out into the night, “the model of good cheer in the eye of diversity”, as Libby says.
As fat flakes of snow began coming down, we climbed into the vans and headed down valley in front of the edge of the forecast storm, tired, warm and a bit amazed at the richness of the winter cycles on the Skagit River.
