After hearing that there were about a thousand Bald Eagles in the Loess Bluffs area of Missouri, we and a couple other couples drove the almost two hours to see them. The weather was cool, but really pretty. (These are the same two couples we drove to Minnesota with to see owls last January… That was COLD! Read about it here.)
The Loess Bluffs Wildlife Refuge is arranged around a large lake, divided into a few ponds. A one-way drive loop circles the lake. Our first stop overlooked a broad expanse, with hundreds of Muskrat lodges, or Muskrat “Push Ups.” A lodge is sort of like a Beaver lodge, where they can live. A push up is a mound of vegetation that they can access from under the ice – a way of gaining access to food without going out on the ice. We saw a Bald Eagle sitting on one, and several Trumpeter Swans enjoying the elevated views from on top of a mound.
We saw several Eagles here, but they were quite a ways away. However, some did nice flybys for us.
Speaking of flying, once in a while we’d see literally thousands of Snow Geese all take to the air simultaneously, fly around in circles for a few minutes, then land, in almost the same location they’d just left.
As we got further around the lake, we saw more Eagles. They can look so regal looking down from their elevated posts!
The Eagles don’t get their gorgeous white heads until they are four or five years old.
All the animals we saw were not in the sky…
We saw a few other birds, like this Flicker.
Here’s a very unusual sight – 8 Eagles in one tree! As we left, two more arrived, making for a very full tree!
This is a Swamp Sparrow – a new one for us.
So we didn’t see thousands of Eagles… But I’m sure we saw over a hundred.
Here’s the most majestic Eagle of the Day, here to bid us, and you, goodbye:
