By Steve Williams

The weather was the only thing that fell short of expectations during the ninth annual Alaska Bald Eagle Festival, organizers said this week.

Drizzly, overcast skies prevented the kinds of brilliant photos available this week in the eagle preserve, but festival committee co-chair Dan Egolf said that didn’t matter to most of the almost 300 festival visitors.

"There was some good photography anyway. They didn’t get the nice sunny backgrounds they like, and the eagles weren’t as consolidated as they could have been." That’s because last week’s warm weather provided more places for preserve eagles to feed on salmon, Egolf said.

The official festival registration count was 296, including 125 Juneau visitors organized by the Juneau Raptor Center, and a group of students from Whitehorse.

This was a watershed year for the festival, Egolf said. Local attendance was bolstered by including entertainment with festival lectures, co-op advertising raised the visibility of the festival nationwide, and the festival switched its legal affiliation from the Haines Chamber of Commerce to the American Bald Eagle Foundation.

Egolf said each of the changes bode well for the festival’s future.

Saturday evening’s presentation on dragonflies by biologist John Hudson, emceed by humorist Al Batt and followed by Haines Arts Council performer Kim Angelis, drew a full house at the Chilkat Center. "By combining arts council and festival events, we both did well," Egolf said.

Affiliation with the American Bald Eagle Foundation opens the festival to involvement of Watchable Wildlife, a Colorado-based foundation that helps communities develop wildlife resources, Egolf said.

"They’ll be on line next year to help us out with the festival. They couldn’t make it this year because there was a Texas birding festival scheduled at the same time, but we’re looking forward to them next year."

Eagle center founder Dave Olerud said the foundation is up for the job. "We’re going to work hard to make it the best it can be and make sure it’s run strongly."

Co-op advertising, in birding journals and Audubon magazine, brought the festival $40,000 worth of exposure for $2,500, Egolf said. The festival was listed with shorebird festivals in Cordova and Homer, and bird-watching sites in Western Alaska.

Egolf said getting the word out about the festival is critical now, with bird watching one of the fastest-growing outdoor activities in the country.

"Almost 25 percent of the people in the country have gone bird watching in the past year. Twenty-five thousand people who came to Alaska on cruise ships said they came for birds, and 20,000 who came here on the road said bird watching was a priority," Egolf said.

Minnesotan Al Batt backed those observations last week at an appearance at a Haines Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Batt, who operates a pontoon boat tour of his hometown’s Albert Lea Lake, said people come from all over the Midwest to watch the relatively unspectacular waterfowl, pelicans, and vultures that live on the lakeshore.

Batt said it took a continuous cleanup of the lake to revive its wildlife, and create the small but sustained birding attraction. "We don’t get the hard-core birders, just the casual ones, but it keeps us busy all summer."

Batt cited statistics showing 48 million American bird watchers spend more than $1 billion on gear and travel. "People just want to see birds. When we get to be a certain age, we need to reconnect with nature. Birds are a unique opportunity, because they’re there, and we don’t have to do anything, except save a little habitat for them."

Saturday’s festival centerpiece, the release back into the wild of injured bald eagles rehabilitated at the Anchorage Bird Treatment and Learning Center, took an unexpected turn when center veterinarian Dr. James Scott called for bids on release of one of the birds.

California resident Preston Cook bid $3,500 to win the job. Scott said the money will go toward a trust fund to benefit eagle study and protection.

"The auction was a spur-of-the-moment thing. We wanted to do something to benefit the foundation, but we weren’t able to plan anything. So we chewed on the idea for a while and decided to go ahead and try it."