{"id":66682,"date":"2018-12-09T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=66682"},"modified":"2018-12-09T11:45:53","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T18:45:53","slug":"the-changing-fortunes-of-farmington-bay-wma-as-a-bald-eagle-wintering-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/09\/the-changing-fortunes-of-farmington-bay-wma-as-a-bald-eagle-wintering-area\/","title":{"rendered":"The Changing Fortunes Of Farmington Bay WMA As A Bald Eagle Wintering Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some history of the\u00a0“glory days”\u00a0with\u00a0Bald Eagles at Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area\u00a0and some thoughts on what potentially happened to those days.<\/p>\n

As part of my long-time summer job with the Utah Museum of Natural History I used to visit Farmington Bay often back in the 70’s and 80’s. But when I finally decided I could take summers off and only teach full-time\u00a0the refuge and I no longer crossed paths and that estrangement\u00a0lasted for almost 20 years. When I took up bird photography in 2007 my very good friend Deedee Obrien (we had worked together at the museum years before) reintroduced me to Farmington. She had “connections” at the refuge and was able to take me through the gates to areas most folks can’t visit during breeding season (or any other time for that matter) and for me it was love at first sight. It was loaded with birds and it was much closer to my home in Salt Lake City\u00a0than Bear River MBR which was my usual bird hangout back in those very early days.<\/p>\n

Some months later when I experienced my first winter on the refuge with the Bald Eagles I was literally blown away!<\/p>\n

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First lets become better acquainted with Farmington Bay WMA from afar. Unlike the rest of these images this photo was taken in\u00a0summer and from\u00a0near the top of the Wasatch Mountains\u00a0(as I was approaching the top of Bountiful Peak)\u00a0just to the east of the refuge. Most of the water\u00a0and\u00a0wetland expanse we see below\u00a0is part of the refuge with Antelope Island (no longer a\u00a0true island) in the middle\u00a0background with other mountains barely seen on the far horizon to the left.<\/p>\n

For locals,\u00a0and for\u00a0regular blog readers who may recognize the names, the red arrow on the right marks what many call the “Golf Ball”, a distinctive landmark which is actually an FAA radar installation right next to Glover pond that can be seen\u00a0adjacent to it.<\/p>\n

The red arrow in the middle marks the location of what most of us call the “4-way pond” where many of the following photos were taken. The actual pond is small and hidden by vegetation growing around it so it can’t be seen in this view. Unit 1, which you’re about to become familiar with, is the very\u00a0large pond below and to the right of that arrow.<\/p>\n

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This is the sight that used to get hearts pounding soon after photographers entered the refuge – Farmington’s iconic “Eagle Tree”. It’s an old, dead snag that was often so full of eagles that at times it seemed to be more bird than wood. Usually all you could get was butt shots from the\u00a0far-away road because the eagles were always looking the other way toward\u00a0all the birds on the water of Unit\u00a01 of the refuge.<\/p>\n

Sadly, all that remains of this snag is a single, seriously leaning\u00a0trunk – the rest of it is almost horizontal or actually on the ground.<\/p>\n

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Back in those days this was a fairly typical view from the road heading to the 4-way looking out over the ice on Unit 1\u00a0– more eagles than you could\u00a0shake a monster lens at. I count a minimum of 23 eagles in this\u00a0narrow view taken at an effective 1120 mm with my 500 mm lens and attached teleconverter. That’s a very narrow slice of Unit I and there\u00a0were\u00a0many more eagles out of frame to both the left and right.<\/p>\n

Often there were hundreds of them on the refuge but most years they concentrated on Unit 1.<\/p>\n

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But Unit 1 wasn’t very conducive for good photography for me because I was\u00a0nearly always there in the morning (long story as to why) and Unit 1 is to the east of the road so the\u00a0eagles were usually backlit or in poor light from our winter cloudy weather and\/or inversions. Lots of fighting went on out there but I usually spent my time elsewhere because of the poor light.<\/p>\n

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Occasionally there were opportunities elsewhere, including this amazingly “tame” juvenile. Most eagles on the refuge are skittish, especially early in the season, but this one almost seemed to crave human company. This bird landed right in front of me at a distance of less than two car lengths and I was on foot rather than in my pickup. The photo is full frame (uncropped) and I had to back further away to get all if ‘him’ in frame. Some folks were even closer than I was.<\/p>\n

If I remember correctly he hung around and acted like this for several days and I’ve always wondered if\u00a0he might have migrated down from the Homer, Alaska area where eagles were nearly hand-fed back in those days (maybe they still are).<\/p>\n

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There were several excellent winters with eagles at Farmington after I took up bird photography but 2009 was truly spectacular. Refuge personnel had long used rotenone (a natural plant extract that robs fish of oxygen) to kill damaging and invasive carp on the refuge but in 2009 they did it upstream of the 4-way pond. Dead and dying carp would occasionally wash down into the shallow pond providing a\u00a0feast for eagles and on clear mornings the light\u00a0angle on the pond was just about\u00a0perfect for photography!<\/em><\/p>\n

I was as happy as a pig in poop and for some of January and a large part of February I just about wore out my camera on eagles. Here a particularly audacious sub-adult is attempting to pilfer some of what’s left of an adult’s fish meal. The adult wasn’t happy about the intrusion but no actual fight broke out.<\/p>\n

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But they often did. Here the tables are turned and the adult wants the sub-adult’s fish. Talk about a dog, coyote or wolf raising its hackles, look at the “hackles” on\u00a0that\u00a0aggressive adult.<\/p>\n

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It didn’t turn out well for the younger and less fight-experienced eagle who quickly vamoosed.<\/p>\n

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When fights broke out it was often difficult to keep the opportunistic gulls out of the photos. Thankfully, coots didn’t dare be in the vicinity.<\/p>\n

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At times I was spraying my lens all over the place, trying to catch a fight here, an eagle\u00a0taking off\u00a0over there or…<\/p>\n

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a bird coming in to land on the pond. It was a perfect training\u00a0ground for the novice bird photographer that I was and I tried to make the most of it. It was sink or swim.<\/p>\n

For this shot I wish the phrags in the background weren’t so bright but I think it’s a neat flight pose.<\/p>\n

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This isn’t a great shot but I stumbled upon it while preparing this post and I was struck by the extreme angle of the eagle’s tail so I decided to include it. I’d never noticed it before – another\u00a0bonus from resurrecting these old photos.<\/p>\n

What I’ve been doing so far is trying to give readers a feeling for how spectacular those early days were\u00a0both for photographers and for eagles. Bald Eagles were obviously thriving on the refuge during winter and so were photographers, birders and nature lovers.<\/p>\n

It was good times for all concerned.<\/p>\n

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But eventually in 2009\u00a0word got out to\u00a0bird photographers\u00a0about what was going on at the 4-way pond and then the circus began. This photo was taken before sunrise – all those vehicles belong to photographers\u00a0(not hunters, hunting season was over)\u00a0parked next to the pond\u00a0as they\u00a0were waiting\u00a0for sunrise and for the eagles to come\u00a0in after fish. Even before the big crowds like this arrived later in February I remember having to be at the pond when it was still pitch dark in order to get a decent spot in the “shooting grounds”. Sitting there in the dark and freezing cold (notice the ice on the road), much of the time with your engine turned off and\u00a0having no heat, was miserable but worth it.<\/p>\n

Many of those vehicles are from out-of-state – especially Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Word really got out.<\/p>\n

An issue with me at the time was baiting. At some point I learned that several of the photographers at the 4-way\u00a0had been baiting eagles by moving dead fish to more photogenic locations with better light. So in extreme\u00a0frustration over the baiting and the crowded conditions\u00a0I started avoiding the 4-way altogether. Where I stopped on the road to take this photo is where I usually turned around and headed back north.<\/p>\n

By then things started to really\u00a0deteriorate for both photographers and for eagles on a variety of fronts. Notice in this photo that some of the photographers are out of their vehicles. When that happened it often created tension in the otherwise amicable group because it could scare eagles off or prevent them from coming in – they were much less wary of vehicles than they were of humans on foot.<\/p>\n

One of the veteran bird photographers was particularly aggressive and obnoxious\u00a0in his reactions to such behaviors that were usually innocent and always perfectly legal\u00a0so the tensions mounted.<\/p>\n

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By\u00a0February of 2010\u00a0 “someone” placed these signs\u00a0in the parking area as you approached the 4-way. The signs were\u00a0meant mostly\u00a0for non-photographer bird and nature lovers who were coming to the refuge in droves to view the eagles and most of them had no\u00a0concept of the accepted etiquette of not getting out of your vehicles when eagles were around. It’s an understatement to say that refuge managers were unhappy about the signs and the territoriality that was developing so the signs were quickly removed.<\/p>\n

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Somewhere in this time frame word got out to state\u00a0politicians that Utah was gaining national notoriety for their wintering eagles so “Eagle Days” was officially instituted at various wetlands and refuges in the northern part of the state. In this photographer’s opinion their motivation for doing so was largely financial and political,\u00a0though state employees tried valiantly to get all the\u00a0educational and\u00a0environmental\u00a0mileage out of it\u00a0they possibly could.<\/p>\n

Soon state officials\u00a0with potential tourist dollars in their eyes\u00a0put so much pressure on Utah DNR to promote Eagle Days that they started trucking in loads of dead carp from their control efforts at Utah Lake to the south and dumping them by the tons along the shore of Unit 1 at Farmington in a deliberate effort to bait even more Bald Eagles and tourists in. It was an unnatural, unsightly and eventually stinky situation that lasted for several years. I avoided Farmington more and more as time went by and when I did go I didn’t photograph the carp piles so I can’t document them with photos.<\/p>\n

Then in early December of 2013 eagles started dying in northern Utah by the dozens. Eventually 27 dead eagles were found and others died in rehab – who knows how many carcasses were never found. For weeks no one could figure out what was causing the deaths though Avian Cholera and West Nile Virus were both suspected, among other potential causes. Eagle carcasses were sent to various labs and eventually it was confirmed that the eagles had died from West Nile Virus.<\/p>\n

Mosquitos are the vector of WNV and\u00a0it is believed that the eagles were being infected by eating dead, infected\u00a0Eared Grebes that migrate through northern Utah in huge numbers.\u00a0But there was concern that the illness might be passed from eagle to eagle because of their dense concentration in places like Farmington so carp dumping was stopped. Better late than never in my opinion.<\/p>\n

Although there’s no evidence I’m aware of that carp dumping caused or facilitated the spread of WNV among eagles their numbers at Farmington in winter have never returned to anywhere near those of the “glory days”.\u00a0 Eagles still come to Farmington in winter but they’re usually few and far between and difficult to impossible to approach. I haven’t taken a decent\u00a0eagle photo at Farmington\u00a0in the last several years.<\/p>\n

And maybe that’s as it should be, although I sure do miss the glory days when\u00a0non-baited eagles visited Farmington in huge numbers,\u00a0every Tom, Dick and Harriet didn’t have a huge, expensive lens and none of them had a chip on their shoulder.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Some history of the “glory days” with Bald Eagles at Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area and some thoughts on what potentially happened to those days.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[355,6,334,8,16,2782,392,394],"tags":[2769,42,43,74,4359,635,1008,140,141,793,1164,268,1810],"class_list":["post-66682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bald-eagles","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-photography-ethics","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-avian-cholera","tag-baiting","tag-bald-eagle","tag-carp","tag-eagle-deaths","tag-eagle-tree","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-fighting","tag-fish","tag-history","tag-poison","tag-rotenone","tag-west-nile-virus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/bald-eagle-2558-2-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-hlw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}