Chilkat River, Alaska
Wednesday, November 18, 2009

    Cold! Today was cold. The temperature wasn’t that much lower today, but there was occasional wind and a few snow showers and everyone agrees – today was cold. But, then, that’s why we bundle up and wear all our layers, and have hot water for coffee, tea, or hot chocolate while out in the woods.

    The eagles were much more accommodating today, as long as you continued to have lots of patience. The river is beginning to freeze, especially north and south of the Chilkat Eagle Preserve. That helps because it tends to concentrate the eagles here even more since the only way they can get to the salmon is in free-running water. The trees were loaded with eagles – sometimes as many as 17 eagles in a single tree. When one gets hungry, it will swoop down to the riverbank and go fishing for a dying salmon that is floating near the shore. It then drags the salmon near or onto the bank and begins to feast. This then attracts other eagles, ravens, gulls, and magpies. Incoming eagles will dive-bomb onto the eating eagles and a quick battle results. The winner returns to the salmon and squawks out a victory call and then returns to eating – or in some cases loses interest and leaves. A popular eagle pastime is to sit in a tree for hours. Another exciting activity is to sit on a stump or log.

    We also saw (and heard) a flock of trumpeter swans, today, as they flew by up river. They landed and swam around for a short time before flying on. They landed a bit too far away to get any decent photos.

    At sunset (about 3 pm), we drove further north to have an early dinner at a little place called the 33 Mile Cafe. Simple fare, but quite good, and they had some great pies for dessert. With all of us stuffed, we headed home to Haines in deep, deep dark along the snow and ice covered roads. The Alaskan highway department plows the road daily with monster plows that travel at incredible speed – throwing snow and ice into a huge cloud.

    We got back to the motel a little before 6:00 pm. Everyone was ready to collapse, but first I had to finish my “chores”, which included downloading today’s 1280+ photos and then backing them up to an external hard drive. Then, of course, I had to make a quick scan through the images to see if anything was worth keeping. I went ahead and did some preliminary processing of a few promising shots and wrote today’s journal entry. After sending my daily email postcard, I’ll hit the sack to rest up for tomorrow’s day in the field – 5:30 am comes just as early here as anywhere.