According to national eagle center, "The average eagle needs between ½ and 1 pound of food each day.". So those animals are harvesting 35-70lb of food (other animals) per day. That's incredible to me! There must be so much life in that area.

https://www.nationaleaglecenter.org/eagle-diet-feeding/

> So those animals are harvesting 35-70lb of food (other animals) per day. That's incredible to me! There must be so much life in that area.

I mean, you could almost certainly harvest more than 70 pounds of ants a day without making a dent in the ant population. Eagles can't eat ants, but "pounds of life" doesn't mean much.

For sure, you're right, I just find it fascinating how much life is out there. If I try visualizing 70lb of small creatures for eagles to eat, it suddenly seems kind of crazy to think of all those creatures and so much life cycling in such a small area where these things hunt. The earth is just covered in life.

A lot of farmers dump oyster shells on their fields. This attracts quite a bit of gulls and seems related but I am not really sure what the food sources there are.

Also this is a seasonal occurrence.

Grew up in Astoria (70’s - mid 80’s) and never saw that many at once. Would be interested to know where your spot is :). Although I’ve never seen them I’ve seen pictures of Snowy Owls at the South Jetty. https://www.jack-n-jill.net/blog/2012/12/south-jetty-snowy-o...

wireless road: https://ebird.org/hotspot/L1296120?yr=cur&m=&rank=mrec

This hotspot is relatively new so the larger lists aren't associated to it.

hate to get this discussion back on topic, but the headline for this article is "population soars": you're talking about 40 to 50 years ago!

I was going to say a similar thing. On one drive from SF to Spokane I was driving through central Oregon in the winter. There must have been a bald eagle on every other fence post for 10 miles at one point. counted over 100 birds of prey, most of them bald eagles.