We headed up to the Riverlands today, looking for Bald Eagles and Trumpeter Swans, but it was not a particularly fruitful expedition. After a week of near zero temperatures almost everything was frozen there. Normally, the swans fly away from the Riverlands in the morning and spend the day foraging for corn in the neighboring farmland. They return around sunset and make for excellent photography. The eagles are most active first thing in the morning, much too early for our liking, but then roost in trees near the water for the rest of the day and are also easy to photograph. The following pictures are from past outings. 

Because everything was frozen there was no easy way to guess the swan’s flightpaths, when they returned at the end of the day and also because everything was frozen all the eagles ended up roosting way out on the ice. Neither situation was very conducive to good photography. Still, while not a particularly productive day, we had fun. We lunched at My Just Desserts in Alton, and we got to see a pair of iceboats sailing. Anne spoke with one of the pilots. They had been going at it all day. They had started in the morning, across MO-367 in the Riverlands proper, sailing on the much larger and totally ice-covered Ellis Bay, but a Corps Ranger kicked them out, saying something about they’re disturbing the eagles and relegated them to the smaller and out of the way Ellis Lake.

Ellis Lake adjoins the Lincoln-Shields Recreation Area, basically a boat launch point for the Alton Pool. Lincoln-Shields was so named to commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s one-and-only duel. In 1842 Abe was a young Illinois legislator. Then a Whig he took exception to the policies of State Auditor James Shields, a Democrat. Under the pseudonym of a fictious widow, Abe wrote letters to the paper that made satirical allusions to Shields and generally made fun of him. Things turned serious after Mary Todd Lincoln chimed in, also writing derisive letters to the editor, but using her real name. Shields demanded a retraction and when Lincoln demurred, Shields challenged him to a duel.

As the challenged party, it was Lincoln’s right to choose the weapons. He chose swords over pistols. On the appointed day the two parties ferried across the Mississippi to what was then called Sunflower Island, in Missouri, where dueling was still legal, naturally. Just before the dual Lincoln ably demonstrated what his seven-inch height advantage brought him, by hacking off an overhead tree branch. Seeing this Shields decided to make peace. During the Civil War the island became known as Smallpox Island, because of all of the Confederate POWs who were transported there from Alton and basically left to die. During construction of a nearby lock and dam the Confederate cemetery was rediscovered. A memorial was built to commemorate the war dead, but the earlier, bloodless affair was chosen as the future name for the place.