We saw more bald eagles near Saylorville Lake on Sunday February 22, 2009. These eagles were mature – white heads, white tails, not thrilled with all the attention.
For a first stop we parked and hiked down to the Lake above the dam at one of the closed camp site roads. It is an understatement to say it was cool and breezy on the shore of the lake. No eagles there. Just a couple of frozen “turkeys.”
We headed over to the Saylorville Lake Visitor Center and took in part of a talk by a ranger. He kept all of the little and large kids entertained with his props and facts. (DNR has more information.)
The ranger shared that the eaglets
- start at 3 ounces
- require early imprinting to survive
- weigh 5 pounds at 3 weeks thanks to fish every waking hour
The stages of development include
- branchers
- wingers, and
- the eaglets need their big talons to hang on to the branches in the nest.
- Even then they sometimes fall from the nest and are lost to the fall or once on the ground to predators like raccoons.
Then we were off to the Cottonwood Recreation Area (open Sunday for the Eagle Watch 2009 ). (Watch out because the map is sideways but) Cottonwood is below the dam where the water is open and open water allows the eagles to fish. Folks from the Audubon Society were set up there with spotting telescopes that gave a pretty good view. I pointed my Nikon COOLPIX through a spotter and got the picture to the right. I tried my zoom and got the thumbnail on the mainpage.
Sunday’s Eagle Watch was jointly sponsored with help from
- U. S. Army Corps of Engineers
- Iowa DNR
- Polk County Conservation Board
- Dallas County Conservation Board
- Des Moines Audubon Society, a branch of Iowa Audubon.
Watch for the next Eagle Watch, but in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for bald eagles when you are anywhere below the dam and near the Des Moines River. They soar, they’re big, they beat their wings slowly, and you can’t miss their distinctive white head and white tail.
photos by James G. Lindberg
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