Watch your head: Photo captures more than 150 bald eagles at once

It’s not easy to catch a photo of a single bald eagle, so how lucky do you need to be to catch more than 150 at once?

Apparently it’s not about luck at all.

Local photographer Kamriell Welty submitted this photo of 153 bald eagles perched in three trees Monday afternoon just west of Kendall on the Mount Baker Highway.

“I knew the eagles like to perch on these particular trees. They have been up there the past few weeks on my trips up to Mount Baker, but I’ve never seen them in such abundance,” she said. “A friend pointed out the tree about a week ago and said she had seen about 50 or so at once. I live in Bow and we have an ‘eagle tree’ on the Samish river that occasionally has up to 25 eagles in it. Never have I seen a gathering like this!”

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, bald eagles often gather at communal roosts, perching there overnight and sometimes during the day when the weather is bad. The roosts are usually in large living or dead trees relatively sheltered from wind and near sources of food.

A 2013 photo of 55 bald eagles perched along Washington’s Nooksack River that was contributed to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mountain-Prairie Region went viral, with more 67,500 Facebook likes and more than 197,000 shares.

Welty, a photographer for more than five years, says she’s been shocked by the immediate popularity of her photo, with several media outlets asking to use it. She said she’s been working on an ongoing project procuring a variety of northwest scenery and wildlife images.

“I have been waiting for the right time to make those images available for purchase, and apparently that time is now,” she said. “To help me handle the requests, I actually set up an online store of the eagle image and others that I am very fond of just this morning.”

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