Our First Day with the Eagles

Saturday, February 28, 2009
Homer, Alaska, United States
  It turned out to be an earlier morning than planned, since our bodies were still working on east coast time. We had breakfast and then got ourselves ready for our first day at the eagle feeding in Homer. We had to put "rain coats" on our cameras as we awoke to snow this morning. Our record is in tact for bad weather following us around Alaska. Only since it is winter, we had snow rather than rain.
We arrived at the campground on the spit about a half hour before the eagle feeding . There were other photographers in Jean Keene's yard and many others scattered around the campground. Those photographers who were not scheduled to be in the yard were reminded that they needed to be in their cars. About 40 eagles we perched around the campground waiting for the fish to fly. The fish are frozen fish and some of the birds just swallown then whole. Many were perched on the roofs of the nearby condos.
Once the feeding started, eagles appeared from every direction and quickly filled all the perches on the driftwood lining the beach. There were too many eagles to count.
Several so close you felt like you wanted to pet them. A couple of birds sat just below the fence waiting for a fish or two to come their way. I was ready to bring one home with us since he just sat right below us the whole time. Fred felt he probably would not enjoy the plane ride home. I sure he would have enjoyed living at the dam.
It was difficult to decide where to point the camera there were so many birds. They were fed for about 40 minutes or so. After the fish were no longer flying they just waited hoping for more. Gradually they started flying off to digest their meal.
By this time the snow was falling steadily and the sky darkened making picture taking more difficult so we decided to head back to the cabin for lunch and picture viewing.
Jean Keene also fed and attracted a large number of rosy finches to her yard and they were eating their breakfast right along with the eagles.
I have put a representative selection of pictures here, but will save some of the typical scenes to add throughout the week. We will have five more days at the feeding before we head back to Anchorage.

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