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SCMP Reporter

THEY perch in the branches by the score, the gleaming white feathers of their heads and tails lighting up the skeletal cottonwood trees like ornaments on a Christmas tree. We count a baker's dozen clustered in one tree.

 We're padding down the Squamish River in a yellow raft, but the thousands of bald eagles are oblivious to our presence. Their piercing stares are reserved for the spawning salmon, or rather, for the dying salmon.

  Every winter, chum salmon fight their way from the Pacific Ocean up the Squamish River and into its tributary the Cheakamus, compelled to return to the creeks and shallows of their birth, there to spawn, then to die.

   The bald eagles are there to feed on the rotting salmon carcasses that litter the river shores.

  It is a spectacle that attracts visitors from around the world and has led to fame for the tiny community of Brackendale.

   Thor Froslev, a Dane who moved here 22 years ago, owns the Brackendale Art Gallery (and theatre and tea-house) and lives there surrounded by paintings, photographs and carvings representing the cycle of eagle and salmon.

   He says: 'We don't have to build a Flintstones park or a Disney World to get on the map. Mother Nature has done it for us.'   Froslev campaigns untiringly for the Squamish River estuary - 850 hectares of fragile marshes, sandbars and river channels about 60 kilometres north of Vancouver as the eagle flies - to be turned into a wildlife preserve.

  To make this point, he has organised the Brakendale Winter Eagle Festival every January for the past eight years. Last year the bird watchers, in a single day, counted 3,766 bald eagles in a 65-kilometre stretch, a world record.

  But of course, bald eagles are not an endangered species in Canada's British Columbia as they are in the United States. There they were on the brink of extinction until Congress took steps to protect America's national symbol.

  One thing they have in common with humans, by the way, is that bald eagles get 'divorced'. A Winnipeg doctor and researcher, Jon Gerrad, found that if two eagles try to breed and fail, they live in the same area for about another year before going their separate ways without trying to breed again.

  British Columbia has about 20,000 to 30,000 pairs, one third of the world's population, and the confluence of the Squamish and Cheakamus rivers is now recognised as the most important bald eagle habitat in the world.

  The ecology of the bald eagle at Brackendale begins and ends with the salmon. To understand the eagle you have to understand the salmon.

   Scientists have even suggested they navigate by the stars and moon, by the tug of the Earth's magnetic field, by a sense of smell. These are the talents that bring them back to answer a summons in their bellies, an event in nature that defies description or explanation.

  The salmon mature at sea, travelling thousands of kilometres across the North Pacific. They journey out past the Aleutian Islands, returning after a few years to their natal stream.

   Tagging programmes show that homing salmon will swim without rest for more than 100 hours at a time, at an average speed of 2.2 kilometres an hour. Then comes the tough part, they swim against the currents and rapids, running a gauntlet of fishermen, other predators and often pollution.

  When they enter fresh water, the salmon change from bright silver to their spawning colours of mottled green and purple. Male salmon develop a hooked snout and protruding teeth. They use this to spar with other males.

  When the salmon start to migrate upstream, they expend incredible energy and start consuming their fat reserves. They don't eat, and their immune system seems to shut down.

   Naturalist Terry Tobin says: 'They're like cars. They run on oil which they're continually using up. So if they're delayed or wear themselves out, like trying to jump obstacles against the current . . .'   They reach their birthplace exhausted and near death, their bodies battered but ready to spawn. When this is done, the male and female die. Some 3,000 eggs from one salmon are fertilised. Of these, about six salmon will make it to the ocean. Only one will survive eventually to return to its birthplace.

  The Squamish system of rivers is used as the spawning ground for several types of salmon. There's chum, chinook, coho and steelhead, the only species of Pacific salmon that does not die after spawning. The steelhead may return to reproduce two or three times.

  But the most rugged of the salmon is the chum and the 450,000 chum in the Squamish every year are the reason the bald eagles assemble here.

   We were there early in the migration and Brian McCutcheon, who runs Rivers and Oceans Unlimited Expeditions, was taking us on a raft down the river. We were going to paddle, he told us.

   My idea of an outdoor activity is a few hours sipping coffee at a cafe in Piazza San Marco in Venice. But all is well. Wrapped in life-vests, six of us slide into rafts and paddle into the Squamish.

  At first there is little overt activity, just the primitive, breathtaking beauty of a river seemingly so far from civilisation, tree-lined river banks and forest-clad mountains shrouded in cloud, an aching stillness hanging over it all.

  As this is early in the migration, we see only the occasional salmon in the river near our raft. The real concentration is in January and February.

  The silence is broken with the cry of 'There's one!' As we float past a small sandbank, a bald eagle swoops in to chase off seagulls and ravens, then tears at the flesh of a dead salmon. 'They're scavengers rather than predators,' says Brian. So we see.

  As we paddle, sometimes just drifting in the gentle current, the eagles are drooped like vultures on the branches, watching the river with their deep frowns. They have a visual acuity eight times that of humans, or that of a good pair of field glasses.

  A few screech as they swoop overhead, riding a thermal up-draught. Some are already satiated. An immature eagle, still dark brown all over, drops from its perch and snatches a salmon out of the shallow water. Two adults, their hunting instincts aroused, give chase.

   The juvenile, labouring with a heavy fish gripped in its clenched talons, is overtaken, rolls on to its back to defend itself, and the salmon is ripped from him.

  Among bald eagles, it is the more persistent and most skilful pirate that dines most often on fresh salmon, although their preference is for the dead.

  Each bird will eat roughly one-tenth its body-weight each day, says Tobin, so the eagles of the Squamish River are probably gobbling up nearly two tons of salmon a day.

  We don't see much more in the way of wildlife, but there are usually more than just eagles to see, particularly in mid-winter. Brian says: 'There are the thousands of spawning salmon of course, and seals, trumpeter swans, many, many herons, and even bears.'   Finally, the salmon cycle, one of nature's eternal mysteries, starts all over. And the bald eagles return to their traditional nesting territories scattered up and down the rugged Pacific coast . . . until next year.

  Canadian Outback Adventure has flocked together with two Vancouver Hotels, The Vancouver and the Waterfront, both Canadian Pacific hotels, to create a package that allows bird watchers and the simply curious alike to view the gathering of the eagles.

   The package (from about HK$1,040 to HK$1,140) includes two nights accommodation, a scenic train ride up the B.C. coast to Brackendale, continental breakfast on the train, riverside lunch and a float trip on the Squamish River to see the Bald Eagles.

   For further information write to Canadian Outback Adventure, 206-1110 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, B.C. V6B 2S2 Canada or phone Canada 604-688-7206 fax 604-688-7290.

  If you're travelling independently, head for the SunWolf Outdoor Centre. There are 10 riverise guest cabins there and knowledgeable guides will take you on the river in their rafts. For further information write to Rivers & Oceans, c/o SunWolf Outdoor Centre, 70002 Government Road, P.O. Box 244, Brackendale B.C. V0N 1H0 Canada (or phone or fax Canada 604-893-5614).



WHERE EAGLES DARE