My Adopted Family

Eagle at the National Eagle Center, Wabasha Minnesota

There are hundreds of eagles that nest along the Big River. The counties that border the river in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and on south see a huge influx in the fall as migrants come into the area from Canada. Mrs. Troutbirder and myself visited the National Eagle Center in Wabasha Minnesota several times. From there you can watch eagles flying up and down the Mighty Mississippi. We often stop and watch them at the bar and grill made famous in the movie "Grumpy Old Men."

Here are a hundred or more resident eagles visiting a chicken farm a few miles from the river in Wisconsin.

We live 60 miles from the river. We saw an occasional summer visitor but, surprisingly, only in recent decades have they begun to nest here.
Now we have our own resident eagle family nesting only a few blocks from our home in the woods. They have found a haven in a large cottonwood tree, inside the fenced in trout farm. I watch them go about their business. I worried once when I mistakenly thought the nest had been destroyed this spring in a violent thunderstorm.

I watched them feed on a deer carcass along the shoulder of a busy state highway and worried the trucks were too close. I saw an adult and a immature eagle rest within a few feet of my property in a soybean field. I saw one perched on top of a telephone poll nearby this week.

One day this spring an adult hurried down the tree-lined road in front of my house carrying a large pine bough toward the ponds. It’s almost as if they are family now. I love "my" eagles.