Blogger: Wally Hayes

You're right, but you're wrong. It could also be a farmer's field in Kings County, Nova Scotia. With all due respect to our friends out west, the rural community of Sheffield Mills, about an hour's drive from Halifax, boasts one of the largest concentrations of bald eagles on the east coast.

And if you want to see them up close and personal, all you have to do is synchronize your watch with feeding time at any one of a number of chicken farms scattered throughout Kings County, 

Better still, take in the annual Eagle Watch Festival at Sheffield Mills and enjoy a pancake and sausage breakfast at the community hall after watching the eagles have their morning meal.

More than 20 years ago, long before the festival was ever thought of, chicken farmers in the area were wrestling with the problem of what to do with chickens that died of natural causes during the course of being raised for market.

They began depositing the carcasses of these unfortunate fowl beside their barns and before long crows, seagulls and the rare bald eagle or red tailed hawk began to appear, looking for an easy meal. 

As the years passed, the bald eagles went from being a rarity to becoming quite common. Today there are estimated to be over 400 mature and immature bald eagles spending their winters in Kings County. 

There's the catch, you have to come in winter, between December and March, if you want to see them in any numbers. After the breeding instinct kicks in, in early March, they are off to other parts of Nova Scotia, particularly Cape Breton Island, and further north to Newfoundland and Labrador. No amount of free handouts is going to keep them from pairing up and nesting to raise another family of young. 

Over the years, travelling to Sheffield Mills and surrounding areas to see eagles became a popular pastime for Nova Scotians and visitors to the province, particularly photographers looking for that once in a lifetime photo of a majestic eagle in flight. 

Being a photographer, I was also drawn to Sheffield Mills for the first weekend of the two- weekend Eagle Watch Festival together with a raft of other photographers and birding enthusiasts, and l managed to snap off a few 'keepers'.

That was last Saturday (Jan. 23). If you missed out, you can take in the second weekend of the festival on Jan. 30 & 31.  And don't forget the pancake breakfast . . .  the maple syrup and blueberry topping is to die for . . . 

If you can't make the festival itself, the eagles remain in the area throughout the winter where they are fed regularly by the chicken farmers. So keep an eye on the sky . . . where you see eagles soaring there is usually a free meal waiting to be had (not for you, for the eagles).

The Eagle Watch Weekends take the guess work of finding eagles out of the equation because feed for the eagles is dumped in an open field at Sheffield Mills around 8:30 a.m. each morning. You might have to wait a short while after the meal is laid out before the eagles in nearby trees decide it's time to eat. But, to twist a phrase from a Hollywood movie, "if you feed them, they will come." It's just a different Field of Dreams, have a look . . . 

Not a bad photo, but . . .