Seabeck Eagles, June 17, 2025
I had a free afternoon and the tides cooperated, so I went and spent an hour out with the Seabeck Eagles again.
Tides while I was there went from +2 to +0.3, which to me is about the best range for uncovering the areas that the eagles like hunting, but not so low that the birds tend to go far out away from shore. I had at one point 13 eagles in view at one point, and they were active and arguing a lot, so it was a lot of fun.
This is a surprisingly tough location to photograph well — with the sun out, the light gets very harsh with a bit of glare, and the location of the sun isn’t best for good light so I find you have to plan your angles to get good light and limit harsh shadowing. Also, the wind typically is in your face, and so you get a lot of bird butts as they will almost always take off and land into the wind — so again, you need some thought and planning to be ready for this (and then throw out the inevitable butt shots you get anyway)
The eagles were actively and successfully hunting — I saw at least half a dozen catches of the midshipman fish they’re going after by eagles, and one more by a gull. These are bottom feeders, so the lowering tide brings them closer to the surface, and sometimes traps them in pools if they don’t swim free in time, making them somewhat easy fishing at low tide — which is why the eagles show up in good numbers.
One fun behavior I saw: Up in the trees I heard an eagle start calling, and then it flew out over the water — with a crow in full flight chasing it. This kind of harassing behavior is common in nesting season by many species and it seems that the eagle got too close to a crow nest. He got in one good lick on the tail feathers, declared victory and went back to the nest, with the eagle retreating at speed.
Later, an eagle successfully nabbed a fish on the fly, only to be immediately jumped by two other eagles — bald eagles, like gulls, will happily steal from each other if the opportunity arises. The eagle immediately dropped the fish and boogied, while the other two both dove after the dropping fish. One won, and flew off into the trees to enjoy lunch.
Another attraction here is a set of purple Martin nests, and as usual, I failed miserably at my attempts at flight shots, but they have active nests and from the activity, they are hatched chicks being reared.
I came home with 700ish images, and whittled that down to 35 finals. I could easily have kept 100, it was a really good session — but my goal is always not to maximize image count but quality, and so where there are similar images, I edit down and choose the best out of the batch of similars.
