As I am back home in Clinton for the holidays, I stopped by Lock and Dam 13 this morning to see what I could find.
Bald Eagles are concentrating in large numbers, now that the river is freezing up. There were 40-50 eagles in the trees below the dam, across from the river from the viewing platform and easily 70+ eagles within sight on the ice north of the dam. If this cold weather holds up, which it is supposed to, I would guess that there could easily be 200-300+ eagles there in short time, as I have seen in the past. The eagles below the dam provide easy viewing with just binoculars. The eagles to the north, while you can certainly still see and enjoy them with binocs, are best seen with a scope, being quite a bit farther out. The eagles below the dam were pretty much just hangin' out, but occasionally I could see an eagle on the ice above the dam make a strafe into one of the rafts of waterfowl, which there are thousands upon thousands of, amassing on the patches of open water above the dam. The rafts of waterfowl were a LONG way out (4-5 miles), so heat shimmer (or maybe "lack of heat" shimmer) made it nearly impossible for me to ID them, but there were droves of them with wave upon wave in the air still arriving. I am assuming that the bulk of them were Canada Geese, but there were definitely many ducks as well, and there were quite a few (dozens?) swans as well. I am reasonably sure there were a few cormorants as well. Better viewing of the waterfowl can be done a little upstream on the Illinois side from Thomson Causeway, (in Thomson, IL) "better" meaning only 1-1.5 miles away, instead of 4-5 miles away from the lock. Lots of Gulls (I assume Ring-billed, but didn't check - too cold), Dark-eyed, Juncos and American Tree Swallows as well. I also found a small flock of Savannah Sparrows. Eric Ollie Ames --- Please contribute your sightings to our list; it is only as good as members make it! --- Birding channel recommendation for FRS/GMRS radio use: Primary selection; channel 5/0 , alternate selection; channel 6/0 --- This mailing list is sponsored by the Iowa Ornithologists' Union. Membership available on-line at http://www.iowabirds.org/iou/PayDues.aspx. ----- You are currently subscribed to ia-bird as: [email protected]
