WARNING: this post is a bit longer than normal so I have broken it up into three. You can find DAY 2 here and Mean Girls here. If you want to skip my narrative and just look at the pics, that’s all good with me.
Last year, October 2020, I met up with LJR in Harrison Mills to recon the salmon run and eagle gathering in Harrison Mills. In the late fall the eagles gather for the salmon run. There can be hundreds and even thousands of eagles that gather along the river to feast on the spawned out salmon carcasses that are along the river’s edge.
That year LJR and I saw two… maybe three eagles. I was hoping for a miracle but no joy. Ah well, it was meant to be a recon after all. What I did learn was where to stay, when to come, the costs involved, and some of the places to go to find these beautiful raptors.
So, fast forward to November 2021, BD and I booked two nights in a cozy cabin at the Sandpiper Golf Resort on our way to Vancouver Island to spend a month with our family. My luck was razor sharp… i.e. it worked out but I was definitely on the edge! We checked in and right outside out door were a gathering of about six or eight birds. I was pumped!
Actually, on our last morning we found out that these were the first two days of the birds arriving in any numbers. Given the numbers that we saw on Day 1 in the afternoon I was already planning a trip for 2022. It will be a dominant year in the four year cycle I was told and I will plan for a bit later than this year’s trip.
Day 1
Next morning I set out looking for some of the areas I had scouted, read about and heard about and were close by. In the afternoon BD and I drove around quite unsuccessfully for about an hour based on advise we got from someone we ran into. Although we did not find the spot she was talking about we did find an out of the way entry to a protected area viewing spot (well, it’s all protected really) and BAM!!
Here are some of the pics from Day 1.
The End (of Day 1)