Eagle Count for 02/24/2010

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Where there are salmon...EAGLES WILL FOLLOW

Above: A salmon carcass lies on a river bank near the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Marblemount Hatchery in this 2004 file photo. Eagles flock to Western Washington, especially Skagit County, from November to January to dine on the carcasses of spawned-out chum and other salmon species. Below: A bald eagle takes flight near the Samish River.

  By MARTA MURVOSH Staff Writer

EDRO WOOLLEY — California resident Joyce Valle she said doesn’t remember seeing a lot of Bald Eagles when she was growing up Burlington in the 950’s.  Valle, who now lives in Parlier, a small city near Fresno, boarded a tour bus Saturday to visit various hot spots for watching bald eagles on the Skagit River. She was here visiting her elderly parents in Burlington.  On Saturday, the sky was clear and blue — perfect for spotting eagles.  With the exception of a trip to Alaska a few years ago, Valle said she hasn’t seen a lot of eagles.  She decided to take the tour, offered by the Skagit River Bald Eagle Awareness Team, to find out what she had missed in her youth.

I don’t remember there being a lot of fuss over eagles back then,” said Valle, a 1962 Burlington-Edison High School graduate.  In the 1960s, bald eagle numbers in the continental United States had dropped so low the bird was heading toward extinction.  Since then the nation’s symbol has been given protected status, and its numbers have rebounded.

Nowadays, people fuss over the eagles.  Each Wednesday during the winters, three spotters count the snowy-headed raptors along the 150 river miles between Sedro-Woolley and Newhalem.

Eagles also draw tourists to Eastern Skagit County.  Last weekend, 700 people stopped at the Skagit River Bald Eagle Interpretive Center in Rockport, said Ember LaBounty, a volunteer at the center.  Almost always, the number of eagles peaks in mid-December, LaBounty said.  The peak coincides with the chum salmon run.

There’s a direct correlation between the numbers of returning chum and eagles that flock to the Skagit River, said Brett Barkdull, a district biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.  The eagles go where the food is,” Barkdull said. “When there is lots of food on the upper Skagit, they go there.”

This year, the number of returning chum has been down and as a result, the number of eagles counted on the Skagit is lower than it has been in recent years.  So far this season, the eagle count peaked Dec. 23, when 300 of the raptors were counted.  Since then, the counts have hovered around 100.

LaBounty said there’s no way to predict what the eagles will do, but generally they number around 100 until the end of January or the first week of February.

Final data is still being compiled on the number of chum that returned to the Skagit.  But fish biologists already know the picture is dismal.  Initially, state scientists forecasted 25,000 chum would return.  Later, they revised that prediction to 17,000.  Even the higher number is well below the state’s goal of 40,000 for an odd year.

The numbers are way down,” Barkdull said Thursday.  “If I had to guess it’s probably closer to 20,000.

For comparison, 19,400 chum returned to the Skagit in 2007.  In 2005, there were 34,000 chum.  For reasons that fish biologists haven’t determined, chum numbers are lower in odd years, higher in even years.  In even years, the state’s goal is 116,500.  Reduced chum runs were noted in rivers throughout the Puget Sound region, Barkdull said.  State biologists think the ocean wasn’t friendly to chums that spawned in 2004, 2005 & 2006.

“For whatever reason, in Puget Sound, ocean survival for chums is down,” Barkdull said.  “It’s way down from what it was in the early 2000s.”  Other salmon species didn’t suffer the same fate as the chum this year.  Puget Sound pink & coho salmon, as well as Columbia River sockeye, had “fantastic” runs, Barkdull said.  Roughly 2 million pink salmon returned to the Skagit — one for every seven or eight that left the river as a juvenile.  Although the numbers aren’t final, the run could be second only to a record-breaking pink run in the 1960s, Barkdull said. 

“We had so many fish — it was ridiculous,” he said.  The coho survival rates were about 20 percent, Barkdull said.  “We haven’t seen this high a survival rate since the late 1980s,” Barkdull said.

Even when chum have a good year, other factors — such as river level, winter flooding and the concentration or distribution of dead chum — affect where people can find eagles.

“You just can’t predict it,” LaBounty said.  Recent rains have raised the Skagit River enough to cover the gravel bars and banks where the dead chum generally wash up and eagles dine.  “The river is very swollen this year,” LaBounty said.  Still, there are eagles to be seen on the upper Skagit, as well as on Camano Island and Padilla Bay, she said.

At his home near Port Susan, Barkdull said he’s seen eagles going after ducks.  One year, the chum run came early on the Sauk River, a tributary of the Skagit, and 400 to 500 eagles   descended on the Sauk’s banks, Barkdull said.  “In 2002, when we had big chum (runs) all over Puget Sound, the eagles were scattered all over the countryside,” he said.

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Last modified: Sunday, April 18, 2010