
Emerging from the water, the young eagle screams defiance. 
An 
Exciting’ 
Adventure 
With 
the King 
of 
the Air 
Climbing to an Eagle’s Nest 
HAD been told by several old- 
| timers who had lived in the land 
long enough for their words to 
carry weight, that it was not a wise 
thing to attempt. More than that, they 
said it was not safe. 
I do not say this to in any way 
glorify that which I did, but merely to 
show that I was one of that large 
youthful order which is prone to dis- 
count sage advice and to insist upon 
personal experience as the only proof of 
the wisdom or folly of a course. 
This counsel had been tendered me 
in the early part of the summer, be- 
fore the big run of salmon started, 
and I was taken from the cannery and 
placed as trap-watchman upon a lonely 
stretch of Kupreanof Island. 
In that part of Alaska the bald 
eagles are pretty numerous. The idea 
of getting pictures of them grew in 
my mind. I had plenty of time on my 
hands. I had a camera. And I knew, 
by the eagles I had seen fishing just 
off the point next to my shack, that 
there were nests back there in the tall 
cedars somewhere. 
I spent hours at a time searching 
the woods, and finally located a nest in 
a high cedar. I would probably never 
have discovered it had not the parent 
eagle, that happened to be on the nest 
at that time, seen me down there in 
the undergrowth and sent out a pierc- 
ing ‘Ch-ch-ch-ch—chee-e-e-e; ch-ch-ch- 
ch—chee-e-e-e.”” 
I worked my way about in the low- 
growing bushes till from one particular 
262 
By EVAN M. POST 
spot I could see up through the 
branches. Then I spotted the great 
nest of sticks and grass far up there 
on that sleek trunk of the cedar. It 
was a monstrous tree—well, I’d say a 
good six feet through at the butt, and 
the nest was fully a hundred and 
twenty feet above the ground. From 
down there where I was, the nest looked 
pretty small, but I knew it was the 
distance that made it look so. For I 
had been told that they measured about 
six feet across, and sometimes more. 
At this point a shadow fell over the 
bushes before me. I swung about and 
caught sight of the old bird who had 
cried out his warning to me. Though 
he was sailing above the tops of the 
trees, I could see that he was of large 
spread. 
But now to climb the tree. As I have 
said, the trunk of the tree was smooth 
and limbless for a good fifty or sixty 
feet. And I could see that these first 
limbs up there were too old and rotting 
to support my weight. The first limbs 
that I felt I could count on were per- 
haps seventy-five feet in the air. And 
seventy-five feet, I was to learn, is 
seventy-five feet, and no less—when 
you’ve got only air to break your fall, 
should you fall. Well, I wasn’t plan- 
ning to fall. 
N old Norwegian, long in the coun- 
try, had told me that the big dan- 
ger to be encountered in climbing to 
eagles’ nests is that of the old parent 
bird attacking you, and gouging for 
your eyes with their long talons. One 
story in particular had been told me 
about a man who had attempted to 
climb to one before shooting the parent 
birds. He did not come back to camp 
that night and his partner, searching 
for him the next day, found him cling- 
ing to the limbs far up in the tree. It 
seems the eagles had got at his eyes, 
and that he is now stone blind. 
Bu I am getting away from my ace 
count. Going to my shack on 
the shore of the island I soon came 
back with a long length of half-inch 
rope and an axe. I already had my 
rifle with me. 
Now I could see that there was not 
a chance in the world of my scaling 
the bare trunk of the big cedar in which 
the nest was located. So I looked about 
for other means of gaining my object-. 
ive. Growing parallel with the big 
cedar was another tree of about four 
feet thickness at the butt. This tree 
was about ten feet from the other one, 
but I could see that at a height of some 
seventy feet one limb of this smaller 
tree (which had more limbs than the 
big cedar) came out pretty near to the 
cedar. I figured that if I could climb 
the smaller tree, I could swing over t0| 
the big one by means of that outreach- 
ing limb. But right here I was up 
against another difficulty! there were 
no limbs on the second tree for nearly 
forty feet. 
Then I took the axe and attempted 
to fell a small neighboring spruce int¢ 
