Record bald eagle count registered along Washington state river
MARBLEMOUNT, Wash. (AP) - The eagles have landed - and landed and landed some more.
A record 580 bald eagles were counted Jan. 3 along a 19-kilometre stretch of the Skagit River, well over the previous mark of 477 in the winter of 1991-92, said Jim Alt, a Nature Conservancy expert on the regal raptors.
"At first I thought it was a mistake," Alt said. The eagles swoop down on the river each winter to feast on spawned-out salmon, especially chum. It's the country's largest gathering of bald eagles.
Some believe an unusually stormy winter has brought the large number of big birds, but wildlife biologists say the cause is unclear.
Whatever the reason, eagle watchers are delighted.
Alt and Bob Carey, the Skagit River program director for the conservancy, picked their way gingerly through a blackberry bramble along the river's edge.
"Over on that gravel bar, there's eight," Carey whispered.
The eagle's soft chirp was answered by the raucous gronk of a raven as the river swirled around gravel bars where eagles shredded fish carcasses a two-hour drive north of downtown Seattle.
The Skagit is the largest of the many rivers emptying into Puget Sound and the associated inland marine waters and supports runs of steelhead and five species of salmon. This year has been ideal for fish because of stable water levels, and the eagles also benefited from windstorms last month that scrambled lesser birds throughout the region.
The Nature Conservancy of Washington established the Skagit River Bald Eagle Natural Area with 243 hectares in 1975, and it has since grown to more than 3,200 hectares in patches from Marblemount westward to Rockport along the river and State Route 20.
That means plenty of big-leaf maples and cedars on which to perch and a natural river flow that meanders across the valley floor, washing dead salmon onto shifting sandbars that become oversized dinner plates for eagles that arrive mostly from British Columbia and Alaska starting in November.
By February they're usually gone.
Eagles can live 30 years in the wild, and the latest count is further evidence of the rebound in population since a brush with extinction in 1970s because of the pesticide DDT, which made its way up the food chain to the birds and caused their eggshells to become too thin to sustain chicks.
Since DDT was banned, bald eagles have done so well that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering taking them off the endangered species list.
MARBLEMOUNT, Wash. (AP) - The eagles have landed - and landed and landed some more.
A record 580 bald eagles were counted Jan. 3 along a 19-kilometre stretch of the Skagit River, well over the previous mark of 477 in the winter of 1991-92, said Jim Alt, a Nature Conservancy expert on the regal raptors.
"At first I thought it was a mistake," Alt said. The eagles swoop down on the river each winter to feast on spawned-out salmon, especially chum. It's the country's largest gathering of bald eagles.
Some believe an unusually stormy winter has brought the large number of big birds, but wildlife biologists say the cause is unclear.
Whatever the reason, eagle watchers are delighted.
Alt and Bob Carey, the Skagit River program director for the conservancy, picked their way gingerly through a blackberry bramble along the river's edge.
"Over on that gravel bar, there's eight," Carey whispered.
The eagle's soft chirp was answered by the raucous gronk of a raven as the river swirled around gravel bars where eagles shredded fish carcasses a two-hour drive north of downtown Seattle.
The Skagit is the largest of the many rivers emptying into Puget Sound and the associated inland marine waters and supports runs of steelhead and five species of salmon. This year has been ideal for fish because of stable water levels, and the eagles also benefited from windstorms last month that scrambled lesser birds throughout the region.
The Nature Conservancy of Washington established the Skagit River Bald Eagle Natural Area with 243 hectares in 1975, and it has since grown to more than 3,200 hectares in patches from Marblemount westward to Rockport along the river and State Route 20.
That means plenty of big-leaf maples and cedars on which to perch and a natural river flow that meanders across the valley floor, washing dead salmon onto shifting sandbars that become oversized dinner plates for eagles that arrive mostly from British Columbia and Alaska starting in November.
By February they're usually gone.
Eagles can live 30 years in the wild, and the latest count is further evidence of the rebound in population since a brush with extinction in 1970s because of the pesticide DDT, which made its way up the food chain to the birds and caused their eggshells to become too thin to sustain chicks.
Since DDT was banned, bald eagles have done so well that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering taking them off the endangered species list.
