Fire, Ice, and Eagles 



In a land shaped by volcanoes and glaciers, 

 birds of prey batten on a winter bounty of salmon 



Text and photographs by Alexander Ladigin 



Winter nights are long on Russia's far 

 eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, but moon- 

 light brightens the landscape when it re- 

 flects off snow some six feet deep. I leave 

 my log cabin before dawn and ski toward 

 Kuril Lake, hoping to elude detection by 

 crows, ravens, and eagles, the better to ob- 

 serve their natural habits. The temperature 

 is barely 0° F, and steam rises from the 

 lake. From the "window" of my second 

 cabin, one that I have built of snow, I see 

 eagles that have left their nighttime com- 

 munal roost and are soaring over the lake 

 in search of a breakfast of salmon. The ea- 

 gles are the reason I spend winters in 

 southern Kamchatka, sitting all day in an 

 igloo, brushing snow from my notebook, 

 and hoping my camera will still work de- 

 spite the frigid temperatures. Although 

 cramped and uncomfortable, my snow 

 cabin, one of many I have built on the very 

 edge of the lake, gives me a view of a 

 teeming oasis in the midst of a white 

 desert. 



Kuril Lake, near the southern tip of the 

 peninsula, is the largest sockeye salmon 

 spawning ground in Asia. Traveling from 

 the Pacific Ocean, through the Sea of 

 Okhotsk, and upriver to Kuril Lake, some 

 eight million salmon arrive annually near 

 the place where they hatched some four or 

 five years earlier. Even though the spawn- 

 ing season is unusually long — from July to 

 March — at peak times the huge numbers 

 of fish pack not only the feeder streams 

 but also the shallow edges of the lake it- 

 self. Spawning, the laying and fertilization 

 of eggs, takes place over and over again at 

 the same sites. The pileup of eggs and the 

 abundant bodies of adult salmon, which 

 die after reproducing, are the foundation 

 of the winter life of Kuril Lake. 



My study area is within the Kronotskiy 

 State Biosphere Reserve, about 2.5 mil- 

 lion acres in area and one of the largest in 

 Russia. Kamchatka itself is a land of glac- 

 iers and active volcanoes. Some thousand 

 feet deep, Kuril Lake is of volcanic origin 

 and is fed by creeks and springs. The sheer 

 volume of water and the influx of rela- 

 tively warm spring water keeps the lake 

 from freezing over completely in winter. 



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