Eagles and tourists flock to Sheffield Mills for annual festival (21 photos)

More than 100 bald eagles and thousands of tourists are gathering in the small village of Sheffield Mills as part of its annual Eagle Watch Festival. 

For the past 29 years, the event has brought photographers and wildlife enthusiasts to the edge of a farmer’s property where the impressive raptors feed.  

Resident poultry farmer Malcolm Lake has been hauling buckets of chicken carcasses into the field for the hungry birds twice a day since December. He records all the action meticulously on his blog. 

“We were lucky with the first feeding as flybys had started even before I left the field,” he wrote on December 31. “One adult even swooped to take a small chicken while my back was turned.”

Former Eagle Watch organizer and councillor for the area, Meg Hodges, says feeding the eagles is a tradition that began in the 1980s. At that time, she says federal government requested poultry farmers dispose of the dead birds in a way that would help the eagle population, which was struggling as a result of habitat loss and DDT poisoning.  

Bald eagles are no longer listed as an at-risk species, but Hodges says continuing to feed them gives eaglets a better chance at making it through the winter. 

“This is kind of a survival piece for the juvenile birds,” she says. “If the winter is harsh, they know that there is going to be a food source here. It’s really nice to be able to do that for them.”

Hodges says the Annapolis Valley’s milder climate, motivates the eagles to migrate there during the winter months from more windswept parts of the province. 

“Some of them are permanent residents, they live here all year, but a lot of them come from Cape Breton where they nest and spend the summer,” she says. “It’s a pretty established group that comes here because they know Malcolm the eagle feeder is going to be there every day.”

Tourists are also attracted to the area. 

“So far this year we have had people visiting from Denmark, Massachusetts, and Japan,” she says. “Those people specifically came here for the eagles, but we also have Acadia University international students who come, excited to see what Nova Scotia has to offer.”

She says last year more than 5,000 people attended the festival, making it the biggest to date. The numbers this winter are down slightly, which Hodges says is because of less ideal weather conditions. 

Between eagle feedings, attendees have a feeding of their own at the Sheffield Mills Community Hall. 

The traditional breakfast is made using as many local ingredients as possible, like Nova Scotian eggs, Huntley’s Village Meat Market sausage, Oxford blueberry sauce, Warren Family maple syrup, and Suprima Farms apple cider. 

“It has been important for us to kind of move away from the boxed pancake mixes and work with our local businesses, because they support our communities so much more than faceless corporations,” she says. 

In the last 29 years, the festival has also transitioned from using styrofoam plates, plastic cups and cutlery, to reusable materials. Hodges says money raised from last year’s festival was put towards an industrial dishwasher, to wash second-hand dishes collected by volunteers.
 
“We were producing anywhere from 10-20 bags of garbage a day and last year we cut down to just one bag of garbage and about 10 bags of compost,” she says. “We are trying to support local businesses, but also the local environment by not polluting it.”

The eagles will continue to be fed daily at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. at the corner of Middle Dyke Road and Bains Road until March. 

The official festival is January 25-26 and February 1-2, with breakfast being served from 8 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.