The Daily Bucket: Sharing a Salmon Lunch with a Bald Eagle

Along the salmon spawning creeks and rivers of the west coast, winter is spawning time for salmon and gorging time for eagles. And it is great for us as well to watch them play out their age old sustenance routines in their natural habitat.

Granddaughter Ava and I drove up the Mt. Baker Highway along the Nooksack River where chum salmon were still spawning and steelhead abound. We started at the Nooksack River Salmon hatchery at Kendall Creek adjacent to the river. There are typically salmon around the nearby spawning streams this time of year, especially those close to the Nooksack River. Where there are salmon spawning, there are spent carcasses and where there are salmon carcasses, there are Bald Eagles. Who can blame them?

These relationships were crystal clear to Northwest Coast Indians who featured these two icons in much of their art and totem creations. 

The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.

We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.

Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the phenological patterns that are quietly unwinding around us. To have the Daily Bucket in your Activity Stream, visit Backyard Science’s profile page and click on Follow.