By Jim McGowan
Special to the Turnagain Times
Eagle feeding in Homer has ended. The Homer City Council banned eagle feeding several years ago but granted an exception to Jean Keene who had been feeding eagles since about 1977. After Jean died last Jan. 13, the eagles were granted a “stay of execution” until March 27.
The feeding ban will most likely kill many, if not most of the 200 to 300 eagles that were fed in Homer. The Homer eagles will not simply go somewhere else. There is nowhere else to go. This summer will be the last summer for many of them, particularly the younger ones.
Keene started feeding a couple of eagles when she arrived in Homer in 1977. After she started feeding them, more and more started showing up. Ten years later she was feeding 200 to 300 eagles. Some of the eagles that began to show up were undoubtedly due to what is called “in migration.” They discovered a place where winter food was easier to get so they stayed for the winter, joining in the feast. Most of the Homer eagles, however, were probably a result of population increase. With plentiful food, the Homer eagles had a higher survival and reproduction rate. Their offspring were also healthy and had a higher survival rate. The offspring stayed where winter food was abundant and the population increased.
Wild populations are often controlled by the availability of food, particularly at critical times. Winter is a critical time for eagles. The streams are no longer choked with spawned out salmon so eagles no longer find abundant food everywhere. The salmon runs are over and the streams are frozen. If streams and rivers stayed open and salmon ran and spawned all winter, most Alaska streams and rivers would have thousands of eagles in winter, just as the Chilkat, in Haines, does.
In a seminar at the America Bald Eagle Festival, in Haines, Dave Armstrong, a Canadian eagle biologist and board member of the American Bald Eagle Foundation noted, “In our research we found that an eagle, with unlimited food available, can only fly twenty-eight minutes a day without losing weight.” Note: eagles can often stay aloft longer than twenty-eight minutes by soaring on wind currents, which does not use much energy. In winter with streams frozen and small animals not moving about as much, eagles must fly longer to find food. If there are a lot of eagles hunting in the same area there is less food for each eagle. They use more energy than they can replace from the food available so they starve or sicken and die. Some of those that survive the winter will have lost weight and will not be able to raise young in the spring.
This reporter started photographing eagles about six years ago. I had seen eagles feeding on fish carcasses left on the beach when fishermen cleaned their catch. Marilyn Morris, a friend who live on the beach in Ninilchik said that the eagles arrive in April or May and most leave in June. When Marilyn called the next spring to announce, “The eagles are here,” our eagle photography adventures started. The arrival of fifty or sixty eagles on the Ninilchik beach followed shortly after the Homer feeding stopped for the summer.
In June when the salmon runs start the eagles leave the discarded carcasses from fishermen in favor of the abundant supply of whole salmon choking the streams and rivers.
In the early ‘70’s when we moved to Anchorage, it was a thrill to see an occasional eagle, sometimes even five or six, along Turnagain Arm during the hooligan run in May. In the ‘80’s and ‘90’s 20 to 50 eagles became a common sight in the Arm during the Hooligan run. It is possible that many of the eagles feeding on Turnagain hooligan in May were fed by Jean Keene through the winter.
Feeding eagles in Homer produced a unique laboratory to study eagle ecology and behavior. The Homer population has been healthy as evidenced by a high proportion of young birds. The eagle’s adaptability was apparent in the behavior of the juveniles who could not compete very well with the older birds for pieces of herring, thrown out for them. The juveniles discovered that begging worked. They would land right next to someone throwing fish and look up at them with the same pleading look all dog owners are familiar with. It worked. Almost invariably they were given a piece of herring. Interestingly, this behavior was pretty much limited to the juveniles. The mature “white heads” were apparently not willing to approach people in this manner, preferring the rough and tumble competition for the pieces of fish thrown out for them.
By extending the feeding for two months after Jean Keene died the Homer City Council gave many of the eagles one more summer to enjoy. Next winter when the 500 pounds a day of fish that Keene fed them is no longer available the reality is that many will not survive.