July 18 -- Eagle Preserve

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We had lunch on the ship, and then boarded an elderly school bus for the launch site for a float-down-the-river eagle-spotting trip.

Here's the setting for the trip.









Here is the sort of conveyance in/on which we floated. A rubber raft, with a fat rubber tube as its sides.

I said it was a float trip, and for us tourists, it was. It was a pretty strenuous activity for the guide, who sat in the middle and rowed (very hard, at times), to keep us from hitting snags and things.

Our guide was a not-very-big young woman, who did an excellent job of keeping us from bumping into bad stuff. I felt guilty that 10 of us just sat there while she worked so hard.....

Better to be capital than labor!

It was hard to take pics from the raft thing. Well, not hard to *take* them, but it was very bouncy, and holding still was problematic. Thank you, Panasonic engineers, for doing such a good job on image stabilization!







We did see a lot of eagles. Mostly from pretty far away. Bald eagles have excellent coloration for sightings by amateurs. Those bright white heads on the
dark body...... They don't get the white head feathers until they are four or five years old. The bigger one of a pair will generally be the female.

This is uncropped, but used a 12x zoom.........







Here is the same pair, cropped so you can see them closer.







We were closer to these two than any of the others, so my pics of them are my best.

This is the higher one of the pair (I think the female, as she is bigger).







Here she is again.







This sort of log is what our guide worked to keep us from hitting..... We were told that the river ranged from many feet deep in some places to just inches deep in others. Gray = glacially fed; they said the water was 34-38F. Brrrrr. Having just had my hand in bone-chilling 40F water the day before, I was very respectful of the river.....

We wore life jackets and knee-high rubber boots (both furnished by the outfitters). They told us that if we fell in, we should arrange ourselves so that our feet were downstream, so that when we hit something, we'd hit with our feet rather than our heads. I wondered how many people immersed in 38 degree water would have the presence of mind to do anything other than breathe............... Luckily, we didn't have to find out.








I haven't had a lot of practice focusing on a moving target. This is the best of several shots I took of this one, which flew pretty much right overhead. I have 'shopped it a bit, trying for clearer edges.... I think you can get a fair idea of the silhouette of an eagle in flight......

(Leaning backwards, trying to get one more pic, thinking "don't fall over backwards into the river!"................)







Astonishing setting, eh?







We saw several nests. They have this triangular/conic-section shape. The same pair will use the same nest for many years, so the nests can become enormous. The chicks, our guide told us, were present but too small to be seen below the edges of the nests. The impression I got was that, later in the season, they might be visible from the river.







It was very nice, floating along. Quiet. Peaceful. Through this gorgeous scenery.

This is where we got out.







Snapped this one from the bus on the way back to the ship.





In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, a link to the next one is here.

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