The Chilkat River Valley in Haines, Alaska. Otherwise known as the "Valley of the Eagles". Every year in late fall several thousand bald eagles converge on this valley to feed on the late run of chum salmon. We spent a week here and had an absolute blast watching the eagles every day. Lots of other birds were in the area as well (notice the swans swimming up the river in this photo). Alaska is truly a photographer's paradise!
This is what the eagles do for most of the day: sit in a tree. We saw eagles everywhere in the trees during our trip. Sure, lots of them were on the gravel bars in the river as well, looking for salmon. But, for the most part, they are perched in trees. Sometimes they sit there for a very long time. Most of the time they were facing in the direction of the river, which meant they had their backs to us. Once in a while, though, one would be facing towards us and in some cases, as shown here, one would be facing the sun downstream. I loved it when they were doing that because it made for some pretty cool pictures with the morning light illuminating the eagles while the mountains in the background were still in shadow. The blue backlighting was some of the prettiest light I've ever seen.
Are you getting tired of seeing eagle images yet? If so, let me know! I may have a couple more I want to share, but I promise I'm almost done :-) This photo shows an eagle jumping up out of the water, preparing to fend off an incoming eagle that is just outside of the frame on the right. I love it when the eagles jump like this and throw water everywhere. It's fascinating to watch and a lot of fun to try and capture with the camera!
As we traveled from Haines back down to Juneau via the Alaska Marine Highway we passed this beautiful lighthouse situated on a large rocky island in the middle of Lynn Canal. I photographed the lighthouse from the deck of our ferry, the M/V Taku. The lighthouse is the Eldred Rock Light, commissioned in 1906. The lighthouse was automated by the United States Coast Guard in 1973 and the original lens was moved to a museum in Haines in 1978. I loved the setting of the lighthouse with the rugged snow-covered mountains in the background. The Alaska scenery sure is awesome!
I wanted to include a bit more of both the water in the foreground and the sky above the mountain, but as I mentioned this was photographed from a moving ferry and I only had a moment to capture the lighthouse with this incredible mountain in the background. I was at 150mm on my Tamron lens, the widest that lens will go. Even though it doesn't have as much sky or water as I would have liked, I still really like this photo :-)
Today's series of eagle images shows a behavior that we saw several times on our trip to Alaska. I'm sure they do it here in Minnesota too, but this is the first time that I've seen an eagle taking a bath! I've seen gulls do this a lot near where I live, but never been lucky enough to see an eagle do it. We had been watching a group of eagles feeding on a salmon and this eagle was the last one remaining. It got the last bit of edible remains from that salmon.
Almost immediately after it finished eating, the eagle walked out into the water and repeatedly began to duck its head and most of its body under the water, then shake around in the water while partially submerged. The eagle did this many times over the course of 15 minutes. When it apparently decided it had bathed long enough, it walked back up onto the rocky shallows and proceeded to shake its wings off several times before taking flight and leaving the scene. We felt very fortunate to have such an up-close view of this behavior. We were only about 50 feet away from the eagle the entire time. I have video of this as well. Look for my eagle video to be posted sometime in the near future.
In today's eagle photo you can see what all the fuss is about with the eagles in Haines, Alaska. There is a late run of Chum Salmon that spawn in the Chilkat River and as everyone knows, after salmon spawn they die. The Chilkat River is a very braided river with a lot of shallows and the dying fish wallowing in the shallows make easy pickings for the eagles. We saw a lot of fish get devoured by eagles during our week in Haines. Believe me, with half a dozen eagles munching on a salmon, it doesn't very long for that salmon to disappear. It seems more often than not that they eat the body of the salmon first and leave the head for last. Quite frequently there is a fight over who gets the head. Many times we saw the victorious eagle take flight with the head to finish eating it from the relative safety of a perch in a tree. This photo shows one eagle chasing another eagle away in an attempt to make off with the fish head.
One of the prettiest areas we saw on our trip to Haines, Alaska was Chilkoot Lake and the Chilkoot River. We made several trips to this area during our stay and each time we were greeted with differing but equally beautiful conditions. Near the end of our trip we had some rainy weather and some incredible fog conditions. When we got to the lake on the afternoon of November 19th the shoreline on the far side of the lake was blanketed in fog. The air all around us was unbelievably calm and quiet. Eagles called in the distance. It was another moment of surreal beauty on a trip that was filled endlessly amazing sights!
