Injured bald eagle set free after rehabilitation

The tiny Fraser Valley community of Harrison Mills is preparing to host thousands of visiting bald eagles in the world’s largest gathering of nature’s foremost dead-salmon connoisseurs. The area’s 600 mating pairs could possibly be joined by over 35,000 migratory eagles this coming winter. Annually as many as 15,000 of those birds regularly visit Harrison Mills through the winter and this exciting viewing season kicks off November 17th with the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival.

With the huge number of spawning salmon in this area, of course there is a very plentiful food source for these beautiful birds. The area has many walking trails that are very close to the local creeks and rivers that the salmon venture through. These trails allow excellent access to tourists and locals to see these majestic birds or prey in their natural habitat. Bird watchers and photographers gather in numbers to take in this short lived opportunity. As the weather in northern B.C. gets colder, up to 500 eagles a day will flow into the Harrison Mills area, like they did during a cold snap in October. More than 2,000 are already in the area.

A local organization known as the Hancock Wildlife Foundation are the ones that care for injured birds and then gather in November to release these rehabilitated birds back into their environment. Established by DAVID HANCOCK in 2006 to broaden his at that time more than 60 years of lecturing and teaching about wildlife and conservation, especially bald eagles. The organization also has a number of webcams active that anyone can log into via the web to see just how the eagles and possibly their young are coming along through the season. Eagles are such beautiful, graceful and amazing birds, they deserve to be helped along their way.