October on the Nizina River brings the late run of silver salmon, and with it comes sgulak, the bald eagle. Most of the eagles we see here are young, and I wonder whether they are out exploring a less ideal habitat than the coast. This one is probably in its third year, since its head is pale with a dark line through the eye, its bill and eye are turning yellow, and its brown body is still mottled with white. Bald eagles do not reach full adult plumage until about age five. What I enjoyed most was watching how it handled the fish. It drove the talons of its left foot through the salmon’s head, which left the fish impaled and easy to carry off. In Ahtna: Sgulak, bald eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus. In Ahtna, sgulak means bald eagle.
As Halloween draws near, it might interest the reader to learn that actor Boris Karloff, famous for playing Frankenstein's Monster in the Universal Studios classic film Frankenstein (1931), visited …
More arts stories
More Ahtna Language Review