Will Big Beef Creek bird watching outgrow the area?

Christian Vosler | Kitsap

SEABECK — Jim Palmer and Dave Boyle were standing ankle deep in the muddy tidelands off of Seabeck Highway, cameras at the ready, searching for the perfect shot.

As they watched, a bald eagle swooped down from the trees on the far bank, settled for a brief moment at the edge of the water, and pulled away, a small fish writhing in its talons. As it dove, a rapid clicking sound could be heard from every direction.

“Another tail shot,” Boyle complained, pulling away from his camera’s viewfinder.

Between 15 and 20 photographers are often likewise spread out down the beach, gathered to watch the eagles who every year congregate at the estuary to catch the midshipman fish exposed by the low tide.

These early-summer gatherings have become a ritual for local photographers. But word is spreading about the estuary’s opportunities for eagle-watching, drawing large crowds from outside the state to the small stretch of land off Seabeck Highway.

The influx of people is crowding the beach and worrying some property owners who cultivate oysters on the mud flats.

Last year, Kingston photographer Bonnie Block won the Audubon Society’s grand prize for her photo of a bald eagle snaring a fish from a group of blue herons. Block’s photo was displayed in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., and covered by national news outlets.

“All these guys from Southern California and the Bay Area all of a sudden want to come up and get this award winning picture,” Palmer said.

But local photographers say that the number of out of state bird-watchers has been increasing steadily for the past several years. Photos taken at Big Beef Creek have made the rounds on photography blogs and professional sites.

“The problem with the internet is that it’s worldwide, and you can’t control who sees it,” Boyle said. “Anywhere on the internet, you start posting things, it just spreads.”

With more people comes the possibility of disturbances. Veteran photographer Betsy Carmona walked out to the low-tide line to pull a woman away and tell her that she was too close to the birds. Most photographers use long lenses and stay back, she said, but tourists may not know better.

“If someone gets out of hand, we do say something,” Carmona said.

Washington State has ceded most of the hands-on management of eagles to the federal government after the birds were taken off the endangered species list, according to Bryan Murphie, a wildlife biologist with state department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The eagles, who use the fish to feed their young, could be deprived of food if forced away from the estuary. But Murphie and Kit Rosenberger, WDFW’s police sergeant in Kitsap, said they’ve received no official reports of harassment of the eagles.

“Since it's not an active nest site, the eagles if they're disturbed too much would just fly somewhere else,” Murphie said.

Boyle, who has been taking pictures of the eagles for around five years, says the birds are comfortable enough to come within feet of people to snag food.

The increasingly crowded mudflats have caused some angst among the nearby property owners.

One Seabeck resident who lives on the water said he had issues with people stepping on oysters, pushing them into the mud and suffocating them.

The resident, who didn’t want to be identified by name, said he “didn’t want to be hard-nosed about it,” but questioned why the photographers, with their long lenses, had to stand in the oyster beds at all.

He also hoped for a certain degree of privacy, and it bothered him to wake up to a dozen photographers on the beach outside his window.

“I like to see them enjoying themselves,” he said, but would have less of a problem if they shot from closer to the bulkhead.

Photographers who have been doing this for a long time understand not to step on the oysters, Palmer said, but tourists may not know the etiquette.

“The big thing is just to use common sense,” he said.

The University of Washington owns a large part of the land on either side of the Seabeck Highway bridge, but the tidelands to the east, where the photographers gather, are privately owned.

“I have been concerned that if there gets to be too many people out here, and they do go out in the oyster beds, the neighbors will complain and we'll lose our privilege,” Boyle said.

Photographers continue to make the trek out to the beach, however. It’ll be hard to get rid of them, Carmona said, because most have been coming for such a long time.

“Now it's a target spot,” she said. “I think it can be managed, if people can be a little more respectful.”