Hi Tweets,

Yvonne Bombardier writes:

> I was also up on the Skagit on the weekend of the Eagle Festival. I
>knew it was late in the season for the Eagles up there but still when
>someone showed up with his information stuff, I couldn't resist asking
>why they would advertise after the Eagles were gone. He said they
>didn't want all the people up there during the peak of the season

A little unclear on the concept, are we? Or is the Retroactive Festival
(perhaps call it the Rockport WA Eagle 'Missed-ival'?) the new fashion in
Festival style? That's a little like holding the Reifel Refuge's Snow Goose
Festival in April, just after they've left: you can look at fields
uncluttered by thousands of geese and it's damn sure easier to find a
parking spot. I've got a good imagination: I can see in my mind's eye the
birds that were there. And hey, what else is that I'm seeing in my mind's
eye? Golly, it's all those people who won't be back after getting conned by
poor marketing and misleading promotional material and if I look *really*
closely, I can see all the money they would have spent into the local
economy but that Rockport WA can kiss goodbye to.

>so
>they wouldn't disturb the birds.

Admirable solicitude, but that's just baloney unless they try to get people
within a few meters of them. Eagles are usually not the shyest of birds--ask
the pair that set up their eyrie in a tree directly beside Highway 10 in
Ladner BC, one of the busiest highways in Greater Vancouver. Or the ones
that simply glare grumpily down at you from a tree you happen to be walking
under. Not to say that non-urban eagles aren't a little warier, but usually
it would take a combined tractor-pull contest and drag race in the next
field over to disturb the average eagle standing around in a
partially-flooded field with its eye on some suspicious wigeon a few hundred
meters off.

If people want to see *lots* of Bald Eagles Haliaeetus leucocephalus, come
to the Delta area of Greater Vancouver BC between mid-January and March,
where they're our commonest wintering raptor according to the VNHS's January
raptor count and personal observation. There's no festival here (but you're
still welcome to look at the birds and dump pots of your money into the
local economy--jeez, if Rockport's not interested...), and they aren't in
concentrations of twenty to the tree as at Brackendale BC for the first
couple weeks of January, but more spread out, more like three or four to the
field. They're usually fairly close (100-300 meters) and easily
visible--usually bare-eye-to-bins distance--from roadside. Drive up and down
the numbered streets off Highway 10/Ladner Trunk Road in Delta's farmland
around the Vancouver Landfill and the fields between Hwy 10 and the north
side of Boundary Bay to see plenty of them, 64th St E to 112th is usually best.

Bonus: often the eagles are standing around and sometimes right in big
roadside flocks of gulls you can comb through looking for Glaucous and
Slaty-backed Gulls Larus hyperboreus and schistisagus, and it's a great
opportunity to cram for that Monday morning test on Herring Gull L.
argentatus and Thayer's Gull L. thayeri ID. And lots of other raptors.

>I thought to myself, why would anyone
>come to an Eagle festival if they couldn't see the birds? Would you come
>to a Strawberry festival after the Strawberries are gone?

You would if only you appreciated Retroactive Strawberries, Yvonne.

>The peak of
>the Eagle season up there is traditionally the second or third week of
>January.

Interesting; just as the crush at Brackendale is petering out--likely
dispersing south.

Cheers,

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)