Soaring like eagles
Today was the kickoff for Eagle Days down at the Chain of Rocks bridge. We have Bald Eagles, in particular, come to this area for the winter. They eat mostly fish, and when the temperature falls quite low, the river tends to ice over, and this really plays havoc with the poor eagles. The Chain of Rocks bridge is an area with lots of rocks just under the surface of the water, which keeps it all stirred up nicely. As long as the water is busy tumbling down over rocks, it doesn't stay still enough to allow ice to form, which leaves open water for the eagles to come over and go fishing. So it's kind of like their winter buffet table.
David seems to have a thing for eagles (this is due mostly in part to a particular episode of Thomas the Tank Engine, in which they rescue a Golden Eagle), so I decided to haul him up there.
It's way east and north of us, so I had to poke David out of bed pretty early...around 7:40 a.m. For him, this might as well be the middle of the night. I tried to bribe him out of bed with the excitement of being able to see an eagle, but he remembered that the forecast was calling for plenty of ice, and he murmured something about "not really" and "much ice" and rolled over. Hmmm. So I lay down beside him and fiddled with his hair and went back over what they were supposed to have at the program, and asked if perhaps he thought a hot chocolate would make it easier to get out in all that ice. That perked him up considerably. I told him to just leave his pajamas on and put his clothes on over the top of them. He looked at me as if I were a nut-job. In the meantime, I went and hunted up MY base layer, turtleneck, sweatpants, coat, etc.
Getting out of the house was a minimal effort, since everyone else was still asleep. (This is a very late-rising family!) David wiggled into a coat and marched out the door with Triceratops under one arm. I had searched the internet the night before and found a line drawing of a Bald Eagle for him to color, along with a couple of sketches of an Eagle and a photo of a woman with a Bald Eagle sitting on her arm, so he could get an idea of how big the birds are. I also wrote a few things for him to read, like "David sees eagles." "Eagles eat fish." "Eagles sit in big nests." (He needs practice, what can I say?) I also made sure that he brought along his binoculars (a cheapie wildlife foundation giveaway for getting one of their magazines) and I had enough sense to actually get the camera charged before we headed out.
It was an interesting world out there today. Every tree branch, every blade of grass, was wholly encased in ice. David wasn't interested in checking any of it out, but I took a few photos. One of the trees at the complex entrance had lost a large branch. These ice storms are terrible on the trees with soft wood. Add any kind of wind to that, and the combination in truly deadly. I think they have Bartlett Pear trees lining the entryway, and we keep losing those trees left and right. David is quite distressed whenever a tree gets hurt, so we had to have a long discussion about hardwood trees and softwood trees and what's planted in his yard.
We stopped by Picasso's (and were quickly followed by the salt and sand crew which had been out working on the parking lot) and I got myself a coffee and I got David a hot chocolate. We split a banana muffin and were on our way.
We got to the shuttle pickup area, which was also a state rest area. I declared an official pit stop and while we were in the bathroom, a woman there asked if we were going to Eagle Days. I said yes, and she informed us that there would be NO shuttle, so we could park right up by the bridge free of charge instead. It was a good thing that we ran into her! Because of the ice storm they made the decision early this morning to stop shuttle service...they figured attendance would be really low.
On the way back to the car I had David feel some of the ice-encrusted evergreen bushes. He was shocked and thrilled, and we compared the amount of ice on the tops of the bushes versus the lower parts down by the ground and pondered why this might be different, and had a lovely overview about the concept of overlap and what it means.
I got him back in the car, and we drove to the bridge, which wasn't too far away at all. (I had no idea, in fact, that it would be so close.) We parked and went over to the information desk, where they gave him a sticker that read, "I saw a Bald Eagle" and an educational booklet and an eagle poster and I don't know what all. Lots of goodies, anyway.
The adjoining tent had quite a cadre of chairs set up, and they were getting ready for a presentation on the Bald Eagle, so we got front-row seats and waited, and speculated as to where the live eagle was. Once the giant dog crate on the table jarred and squawked a couple of times, David thought he was QUITE sure of the answer. He also looked like he might burst soon if they didn't hurry up and take the eagle out of the carrier.
The eagle they had was a smaller one, actually, who was a rescue from down in Florida. Her name was Sanibel, and she'd been hit by a car and her wing was permanently damaged, so she couldn't fly anymore. The Wild Bird Sanctuary took her in, and she does the educational circuit now.
Eagle facts:
* Most Bald Eagles are around 10-12 pounds
* Bald Eagle nests are around 4-5 feet across and 3-4 feet deep
* Juveniles have brown heads and tails...they don't get the classic white-headed look until they're about five years old.
* If a Bald Eagle loses a feather out of one wing, they will drop a feather from the other wing in order to keep the ballast even.
David thought she was wonderful, despite the fact that she tried to take off a couple of time and worried him a bit with all the wing-flapping. We dropped a couple of bucks into the donation box and David decided he wanted to go use the telescopes to spot the eagles by the river. So we started off. I would guess that the Chain of Rocks Bridge was quite a part of Route 66, since they had a lot of memorabilia on the bridge itself. My favorite were the Route 66 signs which had been made into park benches.
It was a long walk, and a cold one. The temperatures stayed between 29 and 31 degrees all day today, and the wind whipped along the bridge at nice pace. The railings not only had icicles on them, but were completely coated in ice, and the metal joints on the bridge were very slick. I put mittens on David, zipped his coat to the top and flipped his hood up and secured it. You could only see his face from the nose up, but his nose and cheeks were bright red.
After a little while, you could hear the sound of the water rushing over the rocks, and the sound got louder the further you went. They had a warming tent in the middle of the bridge, and on the approaching side they had volunteers staffing telescopes, which, with any luck, were trained on any nearby, loitering eagles.
David tried his best to see an eagle, but he couldn't seem to get a hang of the telescope. I looked and saw an eagle sitting in a tree, probably around two miles away. Nice scopes. Other than that, the eagles really weren't around. The warmer weather this winter meant that there was less of need for them to hurry off to the bridge...the water really hasn't frozen over this year.
In the tent they had folks from the MO Conservation Department and the Audubon Society. There was a very nice map of the confluence of the two rivers, so we had to figure that one out and we got a smaller copy of our own. They also had a video about eagles, an a table sparsely stocked with dead, dried bird legs of different sorts. You were supposed to guess which one was the robin's leg and which was the turkey leg, and the eagle and the owl. I thought that had a slight "ew" factor to it, but David didn't seem disturbed. What really disturbed him was the dead, preserved birds on sticks that the volunteer was anxious to show off. He shook his head and vehemently refused to go anywhere near the petrified fauna. I told him that if it really bugged him that was OK, and we would go back across the bridge.
The trip back across seemed much faster, despite the fact that by this point my pant cuffs were getting wet. It also didn't help that I was wearing Doug's coat, which really doesn't fit very well. (Did I mention that someone stole my heavy winter coat? Right before Christmas. We were looking at a toy for David and I set my coat down on a shelf and promptly forgot about it. At checkout we realized I'd left it and we went back to get it and it was completely and totally gone. The employees all radioed one another and nobody had picked up or even seen a stray coat, and I checked for two weeks after the incident and nobody ever turned it in to the lost and found.)
At the other end they had a replica of an eagle's nest (oh MY that's a big 'un!), and some folks who were doing a recreation of the Lewis and Clark expedition camps. They started a fire with flint and steel for our general enjoyment and edification (a Conservation Department person with a camera asked if it would ok to take David's photo to use in their promo material, seeing as he was standing there pretty mesmerized about the fire), and they had various displays of flint-lock muskets and bayonets and swords and such. ("Ah, my father's table," I thought.)
One gentleman there was dressed totally in period costume but smoking a brand-name cigarette. I couldn't help myself, and looked at him and said, "Now that cigarette isn't period, you're supposed to roll your own!" The woman across the campfire (also in period costume) was absolutely delighted that I'd brought this up. He paused for a moment and then looked at me slyly and said, "Well now, I used to." "Umm-hmm," I said, "But that's illegal." He held the cigarette aloft and examined it. "No," he said, "See, I got this in trade. Those Indians are pretty clever." I laughed and the woman across the way shook her head. "You've been called on it!" she scolded him.
David wanted to go back to the eagle tent, so we went over and looked at Sanibel some more. We'd been there for three hours, so I asked if he was ready to go and he said no. The only way I got him back into the car was to remind him that Triceratops was in the car, and he'd probably want to hear all about the eagles.
See the photos here.
Go back to our homepage here.
David seems to have a thing for eagles (this is due mostly in part to a particular episode of Thomas the Tank Engine, in which they rescue a Golden Eagle), so I decided to haul him up there.
It's way east and north of us, so I had to poke David out of bed pretty early...around 7:40 a.m. For him, this might as well be the middle of the night. I tried to bribe him out of bed with the excitement of being able to see an eagle, but he remembered that the forecast was calling for plenty of ice, and he murmured something about "not really" and "much ice" and rolled over. Hmmm. So I lay down beside him and fiddled with his hair and went back over what they were supposed to have at the program, and asked if perhaps he thought a hot chocolate would make it easier to get out in all that ice. That perked him up considerably. I told him to just leave his pajamas on and put his clothes on over the top of them. He looked at me as if I were a nut-job. In the meantime, I went and hunted up MY base layer, turtleneck, sweatpants, coat, etc.
Getting out of the house was a minimal effort, since everyone else was still asleep. (This is a very late-rising family!) David wiggled into a coat and marched out the door with Triceratops under one arm. I had searched the internet the night before and found a line drawing of a Bald Eagle for him to color, along with a couple of sketches of an Eagle and a photo of a woman with a Bald Eagle sitting on her arm, so he could get an idea of how big the birds are. I also wrote a few things for him to read, like "David sees eagles." "Eagles eat fish." "Eagles sit in big nests." (He needs practice, what can I say?) I also made sure that he brought along his binoculars (a cheapie wildlife foundation giveaway for getting one of their magazines) and I had enough sense to actually get the camera charged before we headed out.
It was an interesting world out there today. Every tree branch, every blade of grass, was wholly encased in ice. David wasn't interested in checking any of it out, but I took a few photos. One of the trees at the complex entrance had lost a large branch. These ice storms are terrible on the trees with soft wood. Add any kind of wind to that, and the combination in truly deadly. I think they have Bartlett Pear trees lining the entryway, and we keep losing those trees left and right. David is quite distressed whenever a tree gets hurt, so we had to have a long discussion about hardwood trees and softwood trees and what's planted in his yard.
We stopped by Picasso's (and were quickly followed by the salt and sand crew which had been out working on the parking lot) and I got myself a coffee and I got David a hot chocolate. We split a banana muffin and were on our way.
We got to the shuttle pickup area, which was also a state rest area. I declared an official pit stop and while we were in the bathroom, a woman there asked if we were going to Eagle Days. I said yes, and she informed us that there would be NO shuttle, so we could park right up by the bridge free of charge instead. It was a good thing that we ran into her! Because of the ice storm they made the decision early this morning to stop shuttle service...they figured attendance would be really low.
On the way back to the car I had David feel some of the ice-encrusted evergreen bushes. He was shocked and thrilled, and we compared the amount of ice on the tops of the bushes versus the lower parts down by the ground and pondered why this might be different, and had a lovely overview about the concept of overlap and what it means.
I got him back in the car, and we drove to the bridge, which wasn't too far away at all. (I had no idea, in fact, that it would be so close.) We parked and went over to the information desk, where they gave him a sticker that read, "I saw a Bald Eagle" and an educational booklet and an eagle poster and I don't know what all. Lots of goodies, anyway.
The adjoining tent had quite a cadre of chairs set up, and they were getting ready for a presentation on the Bald Eagle, so we got front-row seats and waited, and speculated as to where the live eagle was. Once the giant dog crate on the table jarred and squawked a couple of times, David thought he was QUITE sure of the answer. He also looked like he might burst soon if they didn't hurry up and take the eagle out of the carrier.
The eagle they had was a smaller one, actually, who was a rescue from down in Florida. Her name was Sanibel, and she'd been hit by a car and her wing was permanently damaged, so she couldn't fly anymore. The Wild Bird Sanctuary took her in, and she does the educational circuit now.
Eagle facts:
* Most Bald Eagles are around 10-12 pounds
* Bald Eagle nests are around 4-5 feet across and 3-4 feet deep
* Juveniles have brown heads and tails...they don't get the classic white-headed look until they're about five years old.
* If a Bald Eagle loses a feather out of one wing, they will drop a feather from the other wing in order to keep the ballast even.
David thought she was wonderful, despite the fact that she tried to take off a couple of time and worried him a bit with all the wing-flapping. We dropped a couple of bucks into the donation box and David decided he wanted to go use the telescopes to spot the eagles by the river. So we started off. I would guess that the Chain of Rocks Bridge was quite a part of Route 66, since they had a lot of memorabilia on the bridge itself. My favorite were the Route 66 signs which had been made into park benches.
It was a long walk, and a cold one. The temperatures stayed between 29 and 31 degrees all day today, and the wind whipped along the bridge at nice pace. The railings not only had icicles on them, but were completely coated in ice, and the metal joints on the bridge were very slick. I put mittens on David, zipped his coat to the top and flipped his hood up and secured it. You could only see his face from the nose up, but his nose and cheeks were bright red.
After a little while, you could hear the sound of the water rushing over the rocks, and the sound got louder the further you went. They had a warming tent in the middle of the bridge, and on the approaching side they had volunteers staffing telescopes, which, with any luck, were trained on any nearby, loitering eagles.
David tried his best to see an eagle, but he couldn't seem to get a hang of the telescope. I looked and saw an eagle sitting in a tree, probably around two miles away. Nice scopes. Other than that, the eagles really weren't around. The warmer weather this winter meant that there was less of need for them to hurry off to the bridge...the water really hasn't frozen over this year.
In the tent they had folks from the MO Conservation Department and the Audubon Society. There was a very nice map of the confluence of the two rivers, so we had to figure that one out and we got a smaller copy of our own. They also had a video about eagles, an a table sparsely stocked with dead, dried bird legs of different sorts. You were supposed to guess which one was the robin's leg and which was the turkey leg, and the eagle and the owl. I thought that had a slight "ew" factor to it, but David didn't seem disturbed. What really disturbed him was the dead, preserved birds on sticks that the volunteer was anxious to show off. He shook his head and vehemently refused to go anywhere near the petrified fauna. I told him that if it really bugged him that was OK, and we would go back across the bridge.
The trip back across seemed much faster, despite the fact that by this point my pant cuffs were getting wet. It also didn't help that I was wearing Doug's coat, which really doesn't fit very well. (Did I mention that someone stole my heavy winter coat? Right before Christmas. We were looking at a toy for David and I set my coat down on a shelf and promptly forgot about it. At checkout we realized I'd left it and we went back to get it and it was completely and totally gone. The employees all radioed one another and nobody had picked up or even seen a stray coat, and I checked for two weeks after the incident and nobody ever turned it in to the lost and found.)
At the other end they had a replica of an eagle's nest (oh MY that's a big 'un!), and some folks who were doing a recreation of the Lewis and Clark expedition camps. They started a fire with flint and steel for our general enjoyment and edification (a Conservation Department person with a camera asked if it would ok to take David's photo to use in their promo material, seeing as he was standing there pretty mesmerized about the fire), and they had various displays of flint-lock muskets and bayonets and swords and such. ("Ah, my father's table," I thought.)
One gentleman there was dressed totally in period costume but smoking a brand-name cigarette. I couldn't help myself, and looked at him and said, "Now that cigarette isn't period, you're supposed to roll your own!" The woman across the campfire (also in period costume) was absolutely delighted that I'd brought this up. He paused for a moment and then looked at me slyly and said, "Well now, I used to." "Umm-hmm," I said, "But that's illegal." He held the cigarette aloft and examined it. "No," he said, "See, I got this in trade. Those Indians are pretty clever." I laughed and the woman across the way shook her head. "You've been called on it!" she scolded him.
David wanted to go back to the eagle tent, so we went over and looked at Sanibel some more. We'd been there for three hours, so I asked if he was ready to go and he said no. The only way I got him back into the car was to remind him that Triceratops was in the car, and he'd probably want to hear all about the eagles.
See the photos here.
Go back to our homepage here.
posted by Kelly at
2:20 AM
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