North America > United States > Alaska > Chilkat Valley > Bird watching > Articles > Alaska: Close Encounter with Bald Eagles

It is cold and misty. Right eye against the viewfinder of my Nikon D70, index finger on the shutter-release button, I am waiting. My 600mm lens is targeting a bald eagle eating bits of chum salmons on a gravel bar along the Chilkat River. Sooner or later, an ‘eagle displacement’ will occur, and I want to be ready to capture it. This is prime action.

It has been already several long minutes. My right hand is freezing, and I’m considering putting back my glove on when a fellow photographer to my left suddenly shouts “Watch out! Fly by! Fly by! Left to right!” I look up, follow the bird’s trajectory, realize it’s aiming at my eagle, refocus on that scene on the gravel bar and shoot on a continuous mode four takes as the two eagles knock one another off over the dead salmon. The incumbent eagle, disgruntled but keen to preserve its energy in the cold climate, concedes, backs off rather than fight, and leaves its unfinished meal to the interloper who grasps the dead prey with its powerful claws to declare it his own, screams through its wide-open beak and finally takes a bite, at times dipping its yellow beak in the river to rinse it off.

This is wildlife photography at its best. It is about anticipation and patience, camera in hand… in some of the most aesthetically pleasing landscapes in the world. From the dry plains of the Masai and Serengeti in sub-Saharan Africa to the cold ice of Antarctica, the rush of witnessing and capturing astonishing scenes of the natural food chain in action is thrilling. And here in the Chilkat Valley, this is no different.

There are more eagles than inhabitants here. The Chilkat Valley is the setting of a frenzy that occurs November-January, when up to 3,000 bald eagles pour in from British Columbia to Northern Alaska to feed on spawned-out salmon left in an unusually warm natural reservoir at the confluence of three rivers. The Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve protects 48,000 acres on each side of this river, with the stretch between “Mile 17” and “Mile 22” recognized as offering one of the best bald eagle shoots in the world. If one wants to photograph that magnificent bird specie in the wild, this is the place to be.

The Valley is just south of Haines, a town of 1,500 people which originally started in 1879 as a Presbyterian mission/school and which at one point thrived from, and now has to deal with the subsequent closure of, its fish canneries, gold mine operations (Haines is one ferry stop away from Skagway, a gold rush boom town at the turn of the 20th century) and an army base. I had arrived several days earlier from Juneau, Alaska’s state capital, taking a 30-minute ride in a tiny four-seater plane over the waters, glaciers and sitka spruce / hemlock forests of Alaska’s stunning Inside Passage, just west of British Columbia. The first thing that struck me walking through Haines was how similar it felt to Ushuaia - a remote, coastal city that exudes a ‘final frontier’ or ‘last outpost’ kind of atmosphere.

What an animal. The Bald Eagle is one of the most impressive birds I have seen. Candace Savage once wrote, “We are inclined to view ourselves as favoured offspring of the universe… It takes an eagle to bring us down to size.” The eagle is a creature of power and grace, a symbol of power. Its majestic aura is constant - whether it sits still on a branch or by the river bank with its distinct white head, yellow bill and piercing eyes, or when it is flying, extending its powerful wingspan of 6 ½ - 8 feet. It commands respect and admiration. It is no surprise the eagle has nurtured a myriad of myths and worships across history and continents, and that the bald eagle, only found in North America, has been adopted the national emblem of the United States in 1782, most likely for the spirit of freedom it embodies.

Polar bears use their keen sense of smell to locate their food, using their nose overtime to avoid having their lives cut short in the winter and retain their crown as ‘kings of the artic’. Similarly, eagles use their astonishing sense of sight to hunt their preys… and stay ‘kings of the sky’’. They are visual hunters. Their eyes are almost as big as ours with a vision enabling them to locate fishes up to 3 miles above the water. In tangible terms, their magnified vision is 9 times better than ours, and would allow someone in a car travelling at 65 mph to make out a pin on the sidewalk!

The intensity of their stare is one of the eagles’ features that struck me the most. While capturing close-ups of animals in the wild is challenging, this is one of the excitements of wildlife photography. The objective is to be not only close, but also at eye level to optimize the effect of the picture. What a professional photographer will tell you is to take “a safety shot” immediately, to make sure you have it (that’s when a digital LCD screen is most helpful), and then approach the subject very carefully, push your luck, and take additional shots… until it takes off (hopefully not towards you).

It was luck that provided me with a much needed “intimate” encounter, on my last day. I was walking along the Chilkat with my D70 Nikon 35mm camera, two lenses (18-70mm and 400mm f/5.6 + 1.5x converter), and a sturdy tripod, browsing across the river for potential behaviour shots (like displacements/fish disputes, fish dragging, individual fly-bys, aerial pursuits) on the other side, when an eagle emerged just below me, sitting motionless on a rock. We were less than 8 feet apart. The bird was probably 8-10 pounds in weight, but I could not tell on its own whether it was a male or a female (females are typically bigger). It was clearly an adult and not an ‘immature’ which has a black bill, an overall dark brown body, and white spotting on its plumage. I lowered the legs of my tripod, and shot carefully (and quietly) the eagle’s eyes. Capturing that stare, which I had hunted for five days, was a perfect way of finishing this photo safari.

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