saw some eagles yesterday!

My boys and I went down to the edge of the Missouri River (actually L&C reservoir) yesterday in an last attempt to bag a "fall" wild turkey. We worked our way down and up the wooded river breaks (about half cedar) in a WIA that I think is owned by the Hutterites. Whoever the owner(s) are they have been busily burning and cutting the woods on the one side to open up their pastures. Interesting landscape for a short-legged semi-old man crawling across downed logs going down hill on semi-slippery ground. No birds there but did cut my first bobcat tracks in the semi-frozen mud of several creeklets! (really the only place for bobcats in e. SD is along the Missouri). Too far to drive for daily trapping but might have to go down and try to call for them and yotes next Jan. if this piece of ground is still in the program.



Further west I took them down along the "Springfield bottoms". The tail end of L&C reservoir always had some sand bars and such in it after they completed the dam in the late 1950s but in the decades since the Niobrara River coming out of the Nebraska a bit further up stream has dumped a huge amount of sediment into the lake and has created a vast marshland of sand bars, cutes, channels, and reed banks (I'm going to have to find someone who has a big jon boat to take me duck & goose hunting down there in early Dec. sometime!). Anyway, that was on the left side as we drove this road and on the right was about a 100-150 meters of flats (now mostly wetlands as well) until the wooded bluff hills.

Didn't see any turkeys on the various upland areas but did come across 4 eagles sitting in a tree at the base of the bluffs. Too bad 2 adults flew off before I could get my camera out but still got a pix of one (probably the mom) and one young one from this year (can't see them very well in this pix except the white of the adult's head and tail, the young one is below and to the right of it). A couple hundred meters further ahead and on the other side of the road was an eagle aerie. I haven't seen one up close for a long time and the pix doesn't give the scale but it was probably 6-8 feet across. Saw possibly another aerie at a distance out on a sand bar in a big dead snag further down the road. A neat but very out of the way corner of South Dakota...

We followed two nests on the Connecticut river and one in little squam lake throughout last spring/summer when fishing we would stop and watch.
Quite a majestic creature, one we almost lost around here, sightings were way down until the last few years more and more are nesting again.
working early spring a few years ago and a large pond that was stocked with goldfish and koi had too low of water during winter so there was a high kill rate, Not until later did I realize that the huge birds around picking up the fish were young eagles.. never seen them besides pictures, it was very rare and was very exited to have seen them that once.