Eagle Watching

Mark and I set off this morning to go eagle watching along the Mississippi River north of St. Louis. Prime season for eagle watching is actually January, early February, but we kept doing other things on the weekends. Today was grey and dreary with snow predicted, but I was pretty determined that we needed to go ahead and go before a few more weeks slipped past. I've never seen an eagle in the wild before, and I didn't want to miss this opportunity in my first winter here.

We drove north along the Illinois side, through the town of Grafton, IL, which is supposed to be Eagle Central, but only saw a few eagles along the way. As we were getting ready to cross the river back into MO, we saw a group of eagles along the side of road. Remember, I don't have a big telephoto lens on my camera....but the pictures zoomed in rather nicely! We saw several convocations of eagles along the roadside (yes, a group of eagles is called a "convocation", I actually looked it up!). Probably over the course of the day we saw close to a hundred, although friends have said in the prime time you can easily see several hundred. I will do better in my planning next winter!

There is an eagle in the top right side of this tree, but there were also hundreds of geese flying around in all sorts of formations.

Here is an eagle flying. In the trees behind the water, there are eleven eagles sitting on branches.

Another eagle flying, with the white heads of others in the trees.

A little blurry picture....

Another lone eagle watching for his dinner.

We did see some snowflakes in the morning, but unfortunately, no snow. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, so I think we may have missed this opportunity. I'm still hoping for another snowfall or two before spring comes!