Annual Eagle Watch takes flight in The Dalles

Starting in late December, American bald eagles migrating south from Alaska and Canada descend along the banks of the Columbia River to hunt for salmon, shad and other fish. A prime winter destination is The Dalles Lock and Dam where dozens of the raptors congregate and roost nearby in tall trees while scanning the water’s surface for their next meal. Visitors can see these majestic birds up close at Eagle Watch, an annual event free to the public that kicks off this Friday across from the visitor center at the dam. Amber Tilton, a former park ranger with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Morgan Olson, Raptor Coordinator at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, join us to talk about Eagle Watch and the remarkable comeback of this species from the brink of extinction.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. It is feeding time at the Dalles Dam. Starting in late December migrating bald eagles heading south from Alaska and Canada spend some time at the dam to feast on shad and salmon and the public is invited to come see them. The Eagle Watch is a free annual event that kicks off tomorrow. Amber Tilton helped start Eagle Watch as a park ranger. She is now a spokesperson for the US Army Corps of Engineers. She joins us now along with Morgan Olson. She is a Raptor Coordinator at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in the Dalles, which is a partner for the event. Welcome to you both.

Morgan Olson: Thank you.

Amber Tilton: Hello.

Miller: Amber Tilton, what is Eagle Watch?

Tilton: What is Eagle Watch? It is an opportunity for the public to come to our visitor center and witness and see birds in the wild who are using the space below the dam as a winter roost site.

Miller: How did it start? You, as I know, helped start this more than a decade ago. Why?

Tilton: Well in the bigger picture scheme of things, eagle watches have been around since the 1960s as a way to do education focused on the recovery efforts and teaching people about the challenges and the threats to their survival that they’ve faced. So it’s not a new concept, but at the Dalles Dam when I started in 2008, I noticed a few eagles and then the next year, there were a few more and then by my third year there, there were quite a few. So it was an opportunity to host an event and it’s sort of a trifecta because we have the Discovery Center who has a raptor education there and we have Rowena Wildlife Clinic who does rehabilitation of injured birds. So by bringing these three together, it’s a really great experience for people to come and learn about the environment.

Miller: Morgan Olson, as I mentioned, you’re with us and the Raptor Coordinator for the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in the Dalles. Maybe you can give us a little ‘bald eagles 101′. Eagles are raptors, but what does that mean? What are the hallmarks of raptors?

Olson: Raptors have three main characteristics, their keen eyesight, their hooked beaks and their big powerful feet. Now, while the concept of raptor usually brings to mind big birds such as eagles, hawks, owls, even small birds can be considered raptors such as the relatively little American kestrel, the smallest falcon we have here in North America but not the smallest raptor. There are Pygmy-Owls that are probably about the size of your fist, if not littler than that, that live out here in the area but they’re predatory birds and they’re very much built for it.

Miller: Those are the small ones but bald eagles, while not the biggest, are much bigger. What’s the average size and weight of a bald eagle?

Olson: Depends on the region of the country they’re from. You’ll get the biggest bald eagles up in Alaska, the smallest bald eagles down in Florida. But here in Oregon, our bald eagles, the males will weigh about 9 pounds or so, the females will weigh about 11 pounds. The males will have a wingspan of about 6.5 feet. The females will have a wingspan of about 7 feet.

Miller: In the mid 1960s, I understand that there were fewer than 500 nesting pairs of bald eagles left in the US. What led at that point to their near extinction?

Olson: So primarily it was the biomagnification of DDT throughout the food web. Biomagnification refers to how, as larger organisms continue to eat smaller organisms, the magnitude of the toxic compound kind of travels up through the food web. So that bald eagle that eats 15 salmon has received 15 doses of DDT. And so DDT was primarily a compound of concern for these larger raptors as opposed to the smaller raptors which escaped relatively unscathed.

Miller: How are bald eagles doing these days, both in the Northwest and more broadly?

Olson: So bald eagles, as you may or may not know, were actually removed from the endangered species list way back in 2007 and in the time since then, they’ve been recovering across the United States and today they’re considered a species of least concern, populations continuing to increase. So they are a great example of its success story through research, hard work, ingenuity and the Endangered Species Act.

Miller: Amber Tilton, we actually have some audio of a bald eagle. So let’s have a listen to what these birds sound like:

[eagle sounds]

That came from Gerrit Vyn and the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Amber, can visitors for Eagle Watch  get close enough to hear something like that?

Tilton: Yes, they’ll be close enough to observe them doing different things, hunting and preening and perching in the trees and chasing each other. So you’re close enough to see them without binoculars, but of course if you have binoculars or a spotting scope, that’s even better. And yes, you will definitely hear them.

Miller: People can, obviously see countless videos of eagles online or on nature shows these days. Why do you think they come to Eagle Watch to see them in person?

Tilton: It’s a different experience. You get the best of all of it. You get the rangers who are there to answer questions. There’s lots of activities for kids and it’s family friendly and you just get to learn more about it in real time as you’re watching them. So we do get visitors who come year after year and it’s very inspirational to see the new people come too who are just all inspired about being there and getting to have this unique experience with these birds that are in the wild.

Miller: How many eagles can people expect to see this weekend and next weekend or I suppose, for the coming weeks, even after this official event is over?

Tilton: Every year is a little different, it sort of depends on the weather. The colder it is, the more eagles you’ll see. We right now have had 25 plus eagles. During the day, they’re more active so you might not necessarily see as many perched in the trees because they’re off hunting and so morning and dusk are good times to see the eagles where they’re perched more.

Miller: I should remind folks if you’re just tuning in, we’re talking about the annual Eagle Watch event at the Dalles Dam. It will be held tomorrow and Saturday from 10am to 3pm and the following Friday and Saturday as well. Amber Tilton is with us, a spokesperson for the US Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District at the Dalles Lock and Dam and Morgan Olson is with us as well, Raptor Coordinator at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in the Dalles. Morgan, what’s the social structure of bald eagles? I mean how do they live together? Hunt together? How much do they do together?

Morgan Olson: So in general, bald eagles don’t tend to do things together. For most of their year, they’re going to be living on their own. They’ll be having their territory, they’ll be taking their prey, they’ll be living a fairly solitary lifestyle and that’s one of the special things about Eagle Watch is it’s not just one bald eagle you’re witnessing, it’s tens upon tens, almost wing to wings sharing these trees together. That’s not very typical throughout the year. They’re gonna spend eight months on their own. They’ll spend three, maybe four months with their partner eagle raising their chicks, two chicks, extremely rarely three chicks, and then the chicks will fledge, the parents will separate and that eagle will be back on its own again. So this is a very special moment to see so many birds acting in a way that is both typical but also unusual in the grand scheme of things.

Miller: What are they like when they all get together?

Olson: They can be a little bit playful or at least that’s what it looks like to us as humans. They’re flying around, they’re going after each other, but while you will get fights and outbreaks and spats between eagles, for the most part they’re just kind of quietly sitting in the trees.

Miller: You noted that for a couple of months, they’re with their mates and they have their young until the young are old enough to fledge, to leave their nests. Am I right that they mate for life?

Olson: As we spend time researching the birds, as we track our birds, as we monitor their nests, we learn more and more about what it means to be mates with each other. And I believe current research points to, while they do typically mate for life, it’s more of, they’re bound to their nesting site more than the other eagle. So as long as these eagles continue to return to the same nesting site, they’ll stay together.

Miller: They’re married to their home as opposed to the bird partner.

Olson: Yeah. So if that partner doesn’t show up that year, well, that eagle may find a new mate.

Miller: Could you tell us about the two bald eagles that the center has rehabilitated?

Olson: Just to correct the phrasing there, we didn’t do any of the rehabilitation there. We are licensed as an educational facility, while the eagles came to us from the Rowena Wildlife Clinic where they were somewhat rehabilitated by Dr Jean Cypher. For rehabilitation, the goal is to get that animal healthy, back into the wild and not all animals can be returned to the wild. They’ll have severe injuries that might not be so bad that this animal can’t survive, but do significantly affect their ability to hunt and to take care of themselves. So in the case of our two bald eagles, the outcome of their injuries is they are both wingtip amputees. They’ve lost a region of their anatomy similar to your hand and with that means they’ve lost their primary flight feathers, which prevents them from being able to fly. Now for Liberty, our female bald eagle, it is presumed she suffered a bite attack of some kind on her wing. While for Ferguson, our male bald eagle, he actually crashed into a tree and fell into the Columbia River itself. Two fishermen happened to be nearby and pulled him out of the river, but before he crashed into that tree, it looked like he had about a two week old gangrene infection.

Miller: Going back to the bite attack, I think of eagles as the top of the food chain. So is the theory that that eagle was attacked by a fellow eagle?

Olson: I think the theory is it might have been something more like a dog, a coyote, something more terrestrial. When it comes to animals attacking each other, we kind of describe it in terms of predation, but predation is attacking another animal to consume it, to eat it, to sustain yourself. You can also have animals fighting through self defense, territorial defense and competition.

Miller: Morgan, you are Raptor Coordinator. How would you describe your own personal relationship with eagles as a species?

Olson: To start off, the federal government would like me to let you know that they are not pets. They are not my pets and we are licensed through them to take care of these animals. But as a lifelong Oregonian, born and raised in the city of Portland, I grew up near the Columbia Slough in the Kenton neighborhood. So I’ve always had birds kind of on the peripheral of my life, from the great big bald eagles and Great Blue Herons swooping overhead to even just the little Sparrows and Chickadees visiting the backyard, so while I don’t have any particular preference for bald eagles as a species,

I still do look at them with awe whether they’re swooping overhead or looking back at me from a tree.

Miller: Amber Tilton, the Eagle Watch event was online last year because of the pandemic. Obviously, this year though, it’s back in person. How did you all make that decision?

Tilton: Yeah, the difference is in the past, our Visitor Center was open for the event. So all activities would be inside. We have displays and educational films and the raptor viewing that Morgan brings would be inside and the difference this year is everything will be outside. So since we can do that and there’s plenty of space to spread out and we can wear our masks and have sanitizer, we think it’s a pretty safe event to proceed with this year and there’s a lot of space to spread out. So everything will be outdoors, but the visitor center will be open for restrooms and you can see eagles mid-December through the end of February. You can come to our location even though the building’s not open, the park is, so there’s trails there, you can hike and enjoy some photography and some bird watching.

Miller: And just bring your own binoculars. What do you hope that people are most going to take away from a visit there to see these eagles?

Tilton: I hope people, and I think that they are, inspired when they see the eagles. Maybe even on a subconscious level, it’s a reminder of hope that we can save these species when we come together as a community. They were on the brink of extinction and it’s like the greatest comeback story ever. And it’s due to people coming together and working together to solve this issue. So I think when they come, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the world’s problems and feel like you can’t make a difference and we’re not getting anywhere. But when you look at this bird, you’re looking at that symbol of hope and perseverance, which is part of the American story, right? And so I just hope people are inspired that their actions do make a difference. And if you can save the eagles, what else can you save?

Miller: Morgan Olson, just briefly, any favorite memories from past years of Eagle Watch?

Olson: So I don’t have too many fond memories of Eagle Watch. I’m sorry Amber, but when it comes to working with bald eagles in particular, I was a volunteer at a different bird facility many, many years ago and I was cleaning for one of their captive bald eagles named Celilo, after the falls, and as I was scrubbing poop off of a perch, as the visitors to the facility were watching me, Celilo slams all 11 pounds of her mass, not 5 inches away, just right over my shoulder, my neck, looks down at me and let loose with that little eagle laugh.

Miller: That sounds interesting but also terrifying. Morgan Olson and Amber Tilton, thanks very much for joining us.

Tilton: Thank you.

Olson: Thanks for having me.

Miller: Morgan Olson is a Raptor Coordinator at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in the Dalles. Amber Tilton is a spokesperson for the US Army Corps of Engineers at the Dalles Dam. Coming up on Monday, Peter Courtney has finally had enough. The president of the Oregon Senate and the longest serving lawmaker in state history is retiring, meaning the upcoming short legislative session is going to be his last. We’ll talk to Courtney about his nearly four decades in office on the next Think Out Loud. Thanks very much for tuning in to our show this week on OPB and KLCC. I’m Dave Miller. We’ll be back on Monday.

Think Out Loud is supported by Steve and Jan Oliva, the Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust, Ray and Marilyn Johnson and the Susan Hammer Fund of the Organ Community Foundation.

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