Perched Eagle

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.