On Sunday morning, at oh-dark-thirty, after Anne and I drove Dave to the airport, we came home again, went back to bed and slept until ten.  David made it back to Rochester on time and without any mishaps.  I’m glad that I didn’t book him through Cleveland, like I was considering.  Cleveland’s airport closed for the day, due to a power outage.  When Dave got back to Rochester, it was actually warmer there then it was here in Saint Louis.

At about noontime we started driving north.  The goal of the day’s adventure was to see Bald Eagles.  I figured that with more than a week of below freezing temperatures, much of the river would be frozen.  The few areas of still open water would be below each step, of that stairway of locks and dams that begin just north of Saint Louis and climb the Mississippi up to Minneapolis.  Since the Bald Eagles feeds on fish, these locks and dams would be prime sites for observing them. 

We had already visited and reported on the first lock in the stairway, number twenty-six also known as Mel Price, at the Riverlands Conservation Area.  We had seen eagles there, but I wanted to try someplace new.  So we headed west, crossed the Missouri into Saint Charles and then headed north along the western bank of the Mississippi River.

Our first stop was at the Winfield lock and dam, number twenty-five.  We saw about a half-dozen eagles there.  A couple of eagles were flying around, but most roosted in the trees lining the riverbank, between the lock and the downstream ferry.  Not being particularly satisfied with this observation we elected to continue our drive north.

Lock twenty-four, at Clarksville, was our next stop.  There was at least a couple dozen eagles there.  They were much more active then the ones at Winfield.  You could see many black dots roosting in the tree tops across the river in Illinois, but the main attraction were the soaring eagles.  They were congregated around the Missouri side of the spillway.  The spillway not only keeps ice from forming, but also stuns the fish as they pass through it.  The stunned fish tend to float to the surface and this attracts the eagles.

There were ice floes on the Illinois side of the river.  Eagles would sometimes land on them instead of flying all the way back to Illinois.  The river is a little less than a half mile across at Clarksville.  Clarksville has a nice observation lookout, while the one at Winfield was in disrepair.

The most exciting aspect of viewing the eagles occurs when one of them actually catches a fish.  The lucky one is soon beset by a flock of his hungry brethren.  Today’s header shows an example of one of these chases.  Sometimes the lucky one would get to keep its catch, sometimes it would be stolen and sometimes the fish got away.

Before we headed for home, we stopped at the Clarksville Station Restaurant.  This establishment looks to be new and also more sumptuous than I had expected to see.  By the look of the larger, albeit snow-covered, patio dining area I’m guessing that it does a lot more business in the summertime.  Anne and I each had coffee and their deep dish apple cobbler, à la mode.