Tag Archives: Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary

Patriot

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Patriot, American Bald Eagle

Patriot, American Bald Eagle

Old business first, an update on yesterday’s post, the office of Claire McCaskill has already responded to yesterday’s tour requests to see the US Capital and Whitehouse. We have a tour reservation for the Capital and our Whitehouse tour request has been forwarded to the Whitehouse, some mumble jumble about the separation of powers. We ought to hear yay or nay from Obama in a couple of weeks. I am impressed that was pretty fast. Who says that the Senate can’t move quickly? Oh, Mister Blunt?

Patriot is the name of the pictured American Bald Eagle. It is a twenty-year-old female. Patriot is a rescue bird, rescued as a chick; the two other siblings from the nest didn’t survive. It is now a ward of the World Bird Sanctuary. Although the World Bird Sanctuary is located in West Saint Louis County, we met Patriot at the Audubon Center in the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary. On Sunday, we saw a number of free Bald Eagles at the Riverlands, but this is the most striking photograph of one. We also saw a few of the last of the Trumpeter Swans, the rest have already migrated north again. We saw about a hundred White Pelicans. They are a little early this year; they don’t normally come through town until March. We also saw numerous little birds. We are still trying to sort some of these species out. It snowed Sunday morning, about three inches worth. This was certainly our first “real” snowfall of the season and what with Saturday’s Groundhog Day forecast, it could also be our last one of the season.

Nell: I won’t pay the taxes!
Snidely: You must pay the taxes.
Dudley: I’ll pay the taxes.
Nell: My hero!

Tax season has descended upon our lovely little hovel. In a bit of gender role reversal vis-a-vie the above dialog, my lovely bride has transformed herself into a real PITA (Personal Income Tax Assessor). I am now peppered with requests for W-2 and 1099 forms and the like. Our financial division of labor is that I pay the monthly bills and Anne does the annual taxes. You can also think of this division of labor as a personal audit of how well I did at managing our finances over the past year. So far, Anne has uncovered that I failed to pay our personal property taxes last year. Claire can you offer some help here too? 😉

Eagle Days at the Riverlands

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American Bald Eagle, Adult, with Fish and Canada Geese
American Coot, Adults
American Goldfinch, Adult Male
American Kestrel, Adult Male
Greater White-fronted Geese
Liberty, Captive American Bald Eagle, Adult
Mallards, Male and Female Adults
Some Seagulls
Trumpeter Swan, Juvenile
Trumpeter Swans, Adult

I don’t know what I did. I don’t know if it was clipping my toenails or bending down to pick up some dirty socks that one of the boys gifted us, but I screwed up my back this morning, my lower back that is. Yep, it was a real pain in the ass. I soldiered on, but at times it was difficult. Anne and I, now a pair of gimps, drove up to the Riverlands to attend their Eagle Days and to do some serious birding.

The accompanying photo gallery tells the tale of the day’s take. It was a target rich environment. The recent spate of cold weather has iced over most of the local water and much more to the north. The Kestrel is my proudest shot, all of the other birds I had already photographed. There is a tale to be told about this bird. It was almost the one that got away un-snapped. We were in the Prius, which makes for a great bird blind. It is stealthy quiet and black to boot. We had our scopes trained on an eagle a ways away. I looked up and there right next to the car, on a street sign, not ten feet away was this Kestrel. We fumbled frantically to get a shot off, but it flew away before any pictures could be taken. Later though we re-encounter this bird, not once, but twice, the displayed photograph is the best of the lot.

We had lunch at Just Desserts in Alton. It is fast becoming our favorite Alton eating establishment. Fast Eddies will always be our favorite biker cyclist bar. It was crowded and we’ve learned from past visits that the reason that they write the day’s menu on a chalkboard is because when they run out of something, they can simply erase it. Consequently, when we placed our luncheon order, we also placed our dessert order, a shared piece of radical cherry pie.

The Riverlands is run by the Corps of Engineers. Since, the Great Flood of 1993 the Corps has gotten religion. If you can’t beat the river, then join it is now more their new motto. ’93 taught the Corps that nature’s wetlands make for pretty good flood control methods. We stopped and spoke with a Corps ranger, who was running a remote spotting scope, away from the maddening crowd. He explained that the Corps now has over 100,000 acres on wetlands that they manage in the greater Saint Louis area. That is a lot of land. He also explained the two kinds of ducks, not male and female, but diving and dabbling. Diving ducks, like the pictured Coots, disappear underwater. The Mallards are representative of dabbling ducks, when they feed; they just stick their heads underwater, but leave their butts above the surface. We’ve all seen duck butts-up in the water before.