A Steller's sea eagle with its sockeye catch.

Soaring with Steller's sea eagles on Kamchatka's Kuril Lake

by Igor Shpilenok

Igor spent much of the winter of 2007 preparing for and photographing the Steller's sea eagles on Kamchatka's Kuril Lake. Here is an excerpt from his upcoming book "Kamchatka: Wilderness on the Edge."  

Kamchatka is like a time machine.  Coming here, I traveled back over three hundred years to the time when Russian Cossacks first arrived.  Wilderness still dominates the peninsula today as it did then.  It was the wilderness that first drew me here, and then wouldn’t let me go.

Kamchatka sits suspended between the Okhotsk Sea and the Pacific Ocean, on Russia’s easternmost border, where the sprawling Eurasian continent comes to an end and the mighty blue ocean begins.  Here, fiery volcanoes reach skyward, then slide down to dip their feet in the cold seas.  Kamchatka’s volcanoes not only create spectacular scenery, but they form unique mineral-rich ecosystems.  Nutrient-laden streams support six species of spawning salmon.  Here one can observe massive salmon runs in pristine watersheds still intact from ocean to stream, or watch the Kamchatka brown bear – one of the largest in the world – as it fishes unabashed for salmon.  Majestic Steller’s sea eagles and white-tailed sea-eagles soar overhead. 

Kuril Lake, the largest sockeye spawning lake in Eurasia, is nestled in the southern tip of Kamchatka.  The first sockeye swim into the lake at the end of April, and the last arrive in February.  Bears feast on the abundance of salmon in the summer and fall, forming one of the highest concentrations of bears in the world.  In winter, as many as 700 Steller’s sea eagles gather here to feed on the salmon, and up to 100 white-tailed sea eagles and 50 golden eagles join the banquet.

In January 2007, when I arrived to the lake, the temperature dipped well below freezing and the wind ceased to blow.  Before my eyes, the lake began to freeze over. Only the places where creeks flowed into the lake remained free of ice.  It was near one of these openings, at the mouth of the Etamynk Creek, that I constructed my igloo-hide. The eagles, which had been dispersed around the lake’s edge before the ice formed, moved in next to my igloo. Some even used it as a perch. 

As the eagles called to welcome the dawn, I walked over the ice from the warm ranger cabin on Travyanoy (Grassy) Cape to my snowy daytime den.  The inside of my igloo was much warmer than outside.  Here I was protected from the wind, which howled around the lake.  I wasn’t completely without creature comforts either – a teapot stood on a gas stove in the center of the igloo, my things were stored in niches cut into the snow walls.  My rifle with rubber bullets leaned against the wall.

The eagles chose alders along the lake shore for perches, or sometimes sat on snow-covered snags emerging from the water, or on ice-covered rocks. The raptors would peer into the clear shallow water, where hundreds of sockeye in their red and green mating colors were circling ecstatically, performing final mating rituals before they died and laying eggs in pebbly nests.  Some of the fish had already spawned and lay dying, floundering in the shallow water, sometimes belly-up, already beginning to decompose.  These fish were easy prey for the eagles.  The birds caught them with one clawed foot and pulled them out onto the already blood-soaked snow.  A male sockeye can weigh four kilograms, or half the weight of an eagle.  Sometimes the fish would thrash in protest, pulling the big birds back into the water with them.  The eagles would beat their enormous wings, dragging the fish out onto the snow. 

The eagle’s huge yellow beak and powerful yellow claws are specially designed to dismantle large salmon.  The powerful tools can take on the thick skin of a young seal, fox, or hare, helping to diversify the primarily fish menu of these birds.  The thinnest part of the salmon’s skin is located near its belly fin, and this is where the eagle begins to rip open the fish.  If it was a female, then the eagle first dug into the roe, ripping out the innards of the fish in the process.  But the bird was rarely able to eat the entire sockeye, especially a large one.  Ravens and magpies immediately joined in, dancing in circles around the eagle, tearing off pieces of flesh and gulping bloody snow.  The other eagles also crept closer, not approaching directly, but moving in circles, pretending to mind their own business. The eagle with the fish would hover over its prey with wings and tail flared, but when two or three competitors jumped at the fish at once, they often succeeded in taking it away.

I didn’t observe any serious fights among the Steller’s sea eagles.  Salmon is a large prey, usually more than needed to satisfy one bird, so the fish-eating raptors have developed the behavioral trait of yielding leftover food to their kin.  Squabbles over fish among different species of raptors were much more serious, such as those between Steller’s and golden eagles.  The golden eagle was noticeably smaller than the Steller, but its fighter’s spirit was clearly stronger.  It attacked the Steller’s without hesitation and often came out on top in the clash.  Becoming the winner didn’t necessarily involve getting the fish, because, while the birds were busy fighting, other birds stepped in and took away the prize.  On particularly windy days, which were more the norm than the exception on the lake, a salmon was distributed among the eagles without a struggle. Gusts of wind would blow the birds off their prey, and the eagles which where able to overcome the wind first would return to the fish, while the others peaceably accepted their fate. 

The Steller’s sea eagle’s contrasting colors, with its white shoulders, tail, and “pants” and the dark background of its body, make the birds visible from afar.  The white spots act as a sort of flag during the nesting period, showing other birds that the nest is occupied.  Steller’s begin to reproduce at an age of six to seven years.  Until about four or five years of age, the eagles have brown feathers, making them easy to differentiate from mature birds.  The eagles nest along the coast, or near spawning rivers and lakes.  In areas with a plenty of fish, nests can be situated less than a kilometer from each other without conflicts arising between the birds. The birds build enormous nests on old trees, sometimes on cliffs, adding new branches to the nest each year.  A nest three meters in diameter and two meters high was found in Kronotsky Nature Reserve.  If not disturbed, the eagles can occupy the same nest many years in a row.  Sometimes one pair builds two or three nests on a territory and alternates between nests from mating season to mating season.  The birds lay from one to three eggs, more often two.  The reproductive success of the eagles is very low.  The reasons are many.  The clutch and young chicks die from hypothermia in areas where the eagles are frequently disturbed and abandon the nest.  Eggs and chicks left unsupervised become victim to predators. Poisoning by pesticides in wintering areas in Japan leads to thinning of shells, making them more susceptible.  Chicks often die from parasites or disease, or fall from the nest due to carelessness or during storms.  Nests sometimes collapse during rain or heavy snows. 

Adult Steller’s sea eagles have no natural enemies, but their lives are continuously in danger.  Hunters shoot them because they ruin furs of animals caught in snares.  They die from lead poisoning, after swallowing bullets left in animals and birds injured by hunters. Unsustainable fishing for salmon in many of Kamchatka’s rivers undermines the birds’ food base.  Despite all the factors working against them, the population of Steller’s sea eagles on Kamchatka has remained more or less stable.  If habitat conditions were to deteriorate, the eagle population could decline dramatically.  Restoring the population after such a decrease would be difficult due to the bird’s low reproductive success.

With my photographs I aim to show the world the magnificence of this enormous bird and evoke in people the desire to preserve it for future generations.

Igor's book on Kamchatka with Patricio Robles Gil will be out in the summer of 2008. Visit our site to find out more about where to get this photo book in a hardback gift cover.

Go to the Kronotsky Zapovednik Photo Gallery.

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Steller's sea eagles gather on Kuril Lake beneath the Ilinsky Volcano..

Steller's sea eagle portrait.

I saw frequent squabbles between Steller's and golden eagles.

Eagles withstood incredibly windy and cold conditions on the lake.

A ranger's dog on the ice of Kuril Lake at dawn.