EAGLE WATCHING - January 28, 2018

Catherine Cummins's photo.

 What to do on a rainy Sunday?

Go bald eagle watching in Ladner BC.

Hundreds of bald eagles that once foraged at a nearby landfill site, now congregate in and around a farmer's sod fields. The operation harvests local food waste which the omnivorous birds take full advantage of. Their natural late fall and early winter food consists of dead and dying salmon who have finished spawning in the rivers. However, heavy rain and high water levels have washed the fish beyond the eagle's reach and so they take advantage of another source of refuse.

The eagles have built huge nests in deciduous trees that in one case tower over a farmhouse, three adult and three juvenile birds glaring down at us with beady eyes fringed by soaked plumage. Along the loops of an irrigator, we count more than twenty-five birds perched and another twenty-five in the field beyond.

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