Last week by reading the Point of View feature on page 5A, I learned that leaving out a few picnic crumbs can inflate the gull population. This bit of carelessness will wreak havoc on the shorebirds because these “inflated” flocks will gobble up the shorebirds’ eggs.
The city of Homer feeds tons of fish waste to hordes of gulls attracted here from near and far to take advantage of this bonanza. A certain fraction of this waste is set aside by hard working, good-hearted folks to help the eagles make it through the winter.
Thus, they too gather around from near and far.
It may be instructive to remember that if this portion held back for the eagles was not given to them it would be added by the city to its gull-feeding station thus exacerbating the problem of fish guts to gull guts to the end product (no pun intended) being deposited on the decks and fixtures of the docks.
The notion that eagles are poorly served by situations that cause them to congregate is ill founded. In Southeast Alaska on the Chilkat River near Haines several thousand (most of the eagles in Southeast Alaska) gather each fall and stay until the last old spawned out, late run dog salmon comes drifting down to lodge on some gravel bar.
Why? Because these fish are the very last available in the entire region.
If some day a whale carcass were to go aground anywhere on the Spit, just as happens elsewhere in the state, the eagles would rally around in numbers comparable to those found at any other easy food source. Unless, of course, some busybody primate dressed in Carhartts came along and towed this gift from the gods out to sea.
A real disservice to the birds.
Looked at dispassionately and taking into account what I have learned from reading the paper it would appear that more fish waste fed to the eagles and less to the gulls would relieve some of the pressure the shorebirds endure.
To reinforce their valiant efforts to supply numbers of their kin sufficient to keep Homer’s Shorebird Festival afloat would seem to be a most worthy cause.
Now here is a suggestion. I heard somewhere (might have been an echo) that it would be a good project for our live wire Homer Chamber of Commerce to do a little study, see if perhaps it just might be that the winter long attraction provided by large flashy birds doesn’t outshine a weekend Shorebird Festival.
From a revenue point of view, of course. Wouldn’t want the chamber soiling its skirts mucking about in any biological issues.
If bird folks find themselves short of problems to worry about they might want to address the consequences of allowing a crow population to displace so many small less aggressive birds or a burgeoning population of pigeons or maybe something could be done about the loss of the 100-plus pairs of eiders that nested on the Spit 50 years ago.
Both eagles and gulls are obviously thriving under present conditions. If the Board of Game were to outlaw the feeding of any species for any reason they would be wise to do it in an even handed manner.
If it is bad policy to feed eagles it is equally bad to feed gulls, crows, songbirds and, dare we say, bait for bears.
As has been said before, “ain’t nothin’ so thin it don’t have two sides.”
Proves once again that braying from one side of the pasture will likely get an answer from the other.
Dave Vanderbrink is a longtime Homer resident.
We encourage you to add your comments. To prevent spam, comments with links are manually approved during the normal business day. Please be respectful of others with your comments, bear in mind anyone in the community may be reading your comments.
