A Bird of Bad Moral Character

Where Eagles Dare By Blaine Harden

Bald eagles are to Homer what pigeons are to Central Park, only more so.

For years, bald eagles have been dining here on small white cats and small white dogs, according to Ralph Broshes, a local veterinarian who for 30 years has been on call when the raptors run amok. (He believes bald eagles see white, small and furry -- and think rabbit.) He said the birds periodically fly into cars, electrocute themselves on power lines, get tangled up in fences, gouge each other's eyes out and make themselves sick from gorging on toxic garbage at the Homer dump.

Bald eagles are fearsomely big -- as large as 12 pounds, with wingspans of up to seven feet and talons that can rip through a human wrist -- and their copious droppings are fearsomely stinky.

It's all due to one person.

...Jean Keene, the "Eagle Lady," the 2004 winner of the Lifetime Meritorious Service Award from the American Bald Eagle Foundation. She's the subject of an admiring picture book. She has been on television all over the world and celebrated in feature stories from Tokyo to Prague. She also happens to be 81 years old and is an exceedingly nice person to talk to.

Keene, a one-time rodeo cowgirl from Minnesota, has been feeding fish to bald eagles on the Homer Spit for 27 consecutive winters. Nearly every morning at 8:30, despite painful arthritis and bitterly cold weather, she emerges from her mobile home (which is parked on the spit near the water and is a gift from one of her many admirers) and tosses out several hundred pounds of fish. Most of it is spoiled or freezer-burned stuff given to her by a friend at a nearby packing plant...

State game officials have described Keene's daily handouts as "not a desirable situation." Most wildlife biologists who study bald eagles agree that feeding the birds is harmful to them and dangerous to people, said Mike Jacobson, a raptor specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska. He said that he and many other eagle scientists would support a change in federal law that would make it unlawful to feed the birds in cities and small towns such as Homer.

There is no evidence, however, that Keene's wintertime feeding program has hurt the bald eagle population. Unlike in the Lower 48, where bald eagles have recently recovered from the brink of extinction, in Alaska the birds have never been endangered or threatened. The population is huge -- about 50,000 -- and thriving.

There are anecdotal reports that huge wintertime crowds of eagles in and around Homer have been rather less salubrious for local waterfowl and sea otter pups. Still, what Keene is doing is not against state or federal law, at least not yet...

By enabling bald eagles to behave badly, her critics say, Keene lends credence to what Ben Franklin said about bald eagles in the late 18th century. "I wish that the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country," wrote Franklin, who believed the turkey was a much more "respectable bird." The bald eagle, Franklin added, is "a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly."