Eagles…

David and I both have every other Friday off of work, unfortunately, they are not the same ones. We have been trying to figure out a good time to take a day trip down to Wabasha to the National Eagle Center to see the hundreds of eagles that hang out around the open Mississippi water at this time of year. I was going to trade a day with Shar, but she had taken Friday off and trading would have given her a really long stretch, so I asked Lanore, and she already had plans made with her son, so I took a chance and asked Lynne (a birder) if she could just work the day for me. Yes, she said yes, thank-you Lynne.

Friday turned out to be a really nice day, partly sunny, warm, in the 30’s, and the truck behaved nicely.

We saw a few eagles on the way, by Read’s Landing, which got me excited to see bunches. Once we got to the Eagle Center and looked around, we found that there were NO eagles. We paid our entrance fee and sat through an interesting talk about different kinds of eagles, their different sizes, what they eat, etc. The interpreter brought out a golden eagle, which was smaller than I had thought, then she brought out a bald eagle.  I’ve seen them eat before, but she let the bald eagle eat quite a bit and it was cool to see it swallow it’s food. The eagle, a female, looked at the woman expectantly once she was on her perch and waiting for her food.

The interpreter warned us before she brought the eagles out, that they may bate. They didn’t, which was nice because that is a little frightening to see. She did get the bald eagle to spread it’s wings though, which I got a great picture of. The other good pictures are of the four eagles sitting on their perches in this open room. One of the female eagles is an early warning system for free eagles flying outside of the building. She does that eagle yell, what ever that is called, when ever she sees an adult eagle fly by.  She told us last year at this time, there were easily 300 eagles in the area right outside the building. This year there aren’t as many because of the strange weather…figures. But a few flew by and landed in a tree close by, then flew off. They were very easy to see. We crossed the bridge to the Wisconsin side and drove a little further south and were able to see several more. Even though we didn’t see as many as I would have liked to, it was still a great day.