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November/December 2005 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: James Bay In-depth: The price of power The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

The bald eagle is a graceful bird. That’s what the Squamish River’s eagle tourists say. But graceful is not the word that comes to mind as I catch sight of my first eagle along the riverbank in southwestern British Columbia one late- November morning. Tail feathers smeared with muck and bits of greying flesh, the eagle guards the carcass of a chum salmon from a seagull that skulks just beyond reach. It peers up over its shoulder, raises its wings and makes a Quasimodo-like lunge for the gull before plunging its beak back into the eye socket of the rotting chum, like a pig at the trough.

Winter salmon runs draw thousands of scavengers to the banks of the Squamish from November to February. On a single day in 1994, enthusiasts spotted 3,769 eagles in the lower Squamish River Valley — a world-record count and one of the reasons the B.C. government set aside more than 700 hectares of the west bank of the river to create Brackendale Eagles Provincial Park four years later. Winter bird tourists now line the dike at Brackendale like spectators at a hockey game, chugging hot toddies, peering through binoculars and roaring with approval each time a food fight breaks out on the far bank of the river.

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For related stories, facts and figures, visit CG’s Explorer Online: The bald and the beautiful