David Griffin Photography

A little over a month ago an 85 year old former rodeo rider passed away in a small coastal town in Alaska.  Thirty years ago Jean Keene did something that millions of people do every day, but in one unique way – she kept her bird feeder filled.  Only one day she noticed some eagles in the area and threw some fish scraps to them — our national bird did what the millions of songbirds do with the tons of seed we all put out in our backyards, they accepted Jean’s gift.

That one act grew into what can only be called an obsession.  Jean worked at a local fish processing plant and would take home unused fish parts and feed the eagles.  More eagles came.  Soon they outgrew her daily scraps and Jean arranged to have fish that was freezer-burned and other fish parts frozen during the summer months — barrels and barrels of fish — so she could thaw them out come winter and feed the eagles.  And the eagles just kept coming.

And when eagles gather, you can be sure that people follow.  Whether it is on the Mississippi River or the Chilkat, when the eagles become more “social” during the winter months there is a steady stream of birders and photographers striving to get close.

Jean’s incredible love for these creatures inadvertently created a small economic engine around her and her eagles.  People would travel from all over the world to see the eagles in Homer, Alaska.  Photographic workshops and birding tours made Homer a “go to” place.  Professional photographers also flocked to Homer over the decades.

During the summer the Homer Spit is home to thousands of tourists, many of whom stay at the numerous local motels or park their RV’s in campgrounds that run along the shoreline.  There is only a faint trace of the Jean-made spectacle that is there during the cold, dark winter months.

The Land’s End Resort was adjacent to Jean’s place.  Jean’s obsession meant that Land’s End and a number of other motels and businesses in town kept operating during the winter months.  (To be fair, after the summer deluge of people, many residents of the town savor the quiet of the winter.)

Jean only fed the eagles during the winter months.   While the eagles would stay in town during the day, nearly all of them would disappear at dusk and head off across the bay to whatever they called their winter home.  Come morning though, the air slowly filled with birds — like airliners all tacking towards La Guardia.

Driving into Homer in February is like entering a slightly odd other-world.  There are birds on roofs, on lightposts, on cell towers..  not so unusual, except that these birds are not gulls or crows as you would expect.  They are Bald Eagles — and they are everywhere.

Sad to say that most people in the “lower 48″ have never seen an eagle, except perhaps in a zoo.  For those of us who actively seek out the birds, it can be a thrill to see one or two in the wild – perhaps flying by during migration or camped out by a hole in the ice along a river during the winter.  There are some eagle nests in our area and they provide the ability to see these birds at what you normally consider “relatively close range”.  ”Relative” until you visited Homer in the winter and saw Jean’s eagles.

That’s Jean’s place in February 2004, when we made our pilgrimage to Homer as part of a workshop led by Charles Glatzer.  Jean lived in that motorhome for most of her years there.  A year or so after it caught on fire and was replaced by friends and admirers of Jean.   We saw Jean at the Land’s End dinner room – she had a booth there where she took dinner and would chat with folks.  We also watched her, at age 80, throwing hundreds of pounds of fish parts at the eagles that gathered around her little compound.  Special guests were allowed to photograph from her property, but she never charged anyone for the privilege.

No good deed goes unpunished, and Jean’s feeding of the eagles ran into disputes with neighbors and state officials.  While some biologists argued that feeding the eagles was not a good idea, I got the impression over the years that most scientists were ambivalent: there didn’t seem to be any long-term negative effects to the eagles.  It seems odd to equate them with song birds at a feeder eating sunflower seeds, but at some level thats all Jean was doing.

Eagles are opportunistic feeders as exemplified in the photograph above.  If they see another eagle with a fish, they will try to steal it.  The reason for this isn’t some criminal streak – it’s simply a matter of energy conservation.  Hunting takes a lot of energy.  Nabbing a fish out of the water takes a lot of energy.  Heck, just staying alive during the winter takes a lot of energy.  Eagles that see food in plain sight, even if it is in the talons of another eagle, have a simple equation in their head: I can hunt for my own and take my chances or I can try to go get the one I see.    Jean’s feeding of the eagles tapped into this equation — it was the scale of her efforts that made it so amazing, although it is worth noting that there are over 30,000 bald eagles in Alaska and only a few hundred of them decide that Homer is a good place to visit.   Now that Jean has passed on, the eagles will come to Homer, they will wait around a little while, then they will get hungry and move on.
Some people have estimated that more than 3/4 of the eagle photographs published were taken within a few dozen yards of Jean’s motorhome.  Look at a close-up eagle shot and check if they eagle is perched  on a dead tree that’s upside down.  Trees don’t grow that way you know…

I was one of those hundreds (perhaps thousands) of photographers that took advantage of the eagles roosting and feeding in Homer.  Betsy threw bait fish out into the bay and a group of us would be there with our 500mm telephoto lenses, firing away, hoping to grab that special image. (And, while I was there, cursing that the sun only appeared the day before the workshop and wasn’t seen thereafter.)

As a conservation photographer there is definitely something not quite right about the photographing eagles in Homer.  These are wild animals, not captive.  The birds are not being harmed in any way, but while the behaviors and actions are natural the situation is manufactured.   Whenever I show the photographs of the eagles, I make a point of describing the conditions which predicated the images coming together.

Still, I was completely and utterly thrilled to be in their presence and it was a trip and experience that I will never forget: lying on my belly on a cold beach, watching an eagle walk towards me and waddle past within a few feet is forever etched in my memory. But it was not a place that I would return to if I were ever to photograph eagles again.

Jean Keene’s passing means that this unique intersection of humans and eagles will most likely fade away.  But because of her love of one of the one of the most engaging birds on the planet we have many thousands of intimate images of a gathering of eagles that will be shared for generations to some.

I suspect the Eagle Lady is now in a place where she can hear their calls and feel the breezes of their wings on her face.  Farewell Jean, and thank you.