It’s time for EagleWatch 2012

Bill Yule knows that winter can't keep a true New Englander inside-not when there's a chance to see the bird that is the symbol of the United States of America.

Yule, who is an educator at the Connecticut River Museum in Essex, is the naturalist and lecturer aboard the museum's EagleWatch boat tours that start on Friday, Feb. 3 and continue until March 11.

Yule concedes that part of the reason people may want to get out in a boat on the Connecticut River at the coldest time of the year is cabin fever, but he says there's more to it.

"It's a love of nature and adventure that is not constrained by New England winters. People do not want to be left inside," he says.

To be sure, they do not have to brave the worst of the elements on the boat, Project Oceanology's 65-foot Enviro-lab III; it has a heated and enclosed cabin. Still, layers of warm clothing are a good idea because the best way to see the eagles, Yule says, is to stand on the open deck. The tour provides binoculars and hot coffee-participants can bring their own lunches.

The eagles usually come from the frozen rivers and lakes of northern New England, but all the wildlife is here for the same reason: fish. With its brackish water, the Connecticut River estuary doesn't freeze and the animals can find the food they need to survive.

"The river is very healthy in terms of its fish population; there are at least 70 different species of fish, millions of fish," Yule says.

And for the feeding population, the fish don't even have to be alive. Winter fish kills are a normal part of the life cycle on the river, and the eagles, Yule says, often feast on winter kill.

A longtime birder, Yule says his most unusual sighting was a lazuli bunting, a bird common in the American West, but a rare visitor to this area. He spotted it five years ago at Hammonnasset Beach State Park and says his is the only sighting of a lazuli bunting in Connecticut.

Yule did not start out to be a naturalist, even though he says he has loved the natural world since his boyhood in Cromwell.

"As a kid I grew up fishing, hiking, camping," he says. "I've always had a deep connection with nature."

His first college degree was in literature and philosophy, neither fields that he pursued. He has been a commercial fisherman, an ironworker and a carpenter, among other things.

He found his true calling in the mid-1980s when he went back to Southern Connecticut State University for a degree in biology, followed by additional courses in environmental education.

In an undergraduate biology course at Southern, Yule discovered what has become a continuing passion, the study of mushrooms. Every weekend between April and the end of November, he, and the other members of the mushroom club to which he belongs, collect wild mushrooms locally. He also photographs mushrooms and lectures throughout the United States on mushrooms and other fungi.

Hunting mushrooms and watching eagles, in Yule's view, are all part of the relationship with nature that he wants people to appreciate.

"Everybody, whether they know it or not, lives in nature. I try to bring people into nature not as something out there but as part of our home," he says.

He feels that kinship to nature even on a bitingly cold winter day looking for eagles on the Connecticut River. At this time of year, Yule notes that the water has a special charm.

"Being out there in wintertime is unique. There are no other boats," he says. "It's subdued, but it's just as beautiful as any other season."