Tag Archives: fox river eagles

Please Don’t put up Pictures of Fog

But I like fog.

I like the way it visually cuts me off from my surroundings. This one wasn’t horribly dense, but you could see nothing beyond the trees on the opposite shore of the river barely 100 yards away. Even those were indistinct shades of gray.

In the tree on the left are a couple of bald eagles, no, really.

Fishing in fog like this is one of my favorite things to do. It makes you concentrate and focus on what is readily apparent rather than letting your mind wander on what is down stream and around the next bend. You can’t see the next bend.

This morning I had already been out on my porch listening to the bald eagles talk down on the river. The geese were being unusually noisy this morning too. Maybe because of the eagles. With the air temperatures just above 40 degrees, it was time to go for a walk. We’ve had a long stretch of below freezing temps and this year my bones are paying the price. Today they didn’t feel so bad.

I could tell by the sound that there were a lot of geese along the river. They were thick on the ice and in the shallow water below the dam when I got there. Some were already getting nervous about me walking along the shore and took off.

The geese that hang out around here all year don’t get so nervous. I can always tell how wild the geese are by how close they let you get. The more domestic ones will let you walk right up to them, they get used to people tossing them food. The wilder ones will start honking and moving around, getting agitated.

I decided to make matters worse by walking out on a spit of land that got me even closer to the geese. The honking kept getting louder.

It wasn’t long before they started leaving in small groups.

This kept up for a few minutes.

Till they were all pretty much airborne.

I quickly realized there were now a few hundred pissed off flying crapping machines over my head.

I flipped the hood onto my head and stood on the end of the spit of land to watch what I started. The honking was deafening and there were so many geese low over my head that I could feel the vibrations from displaced air coming off their wings and onto my eardrums. It took them a few minutes to realize I wasn’t leaving and they headed off down stream.

The other benefit of fog is that it deadens the noise of human activity, but I noticed that it had practically no affect on the sound of the birds on the river. I noticed how clearly I could hear the eagles this morning though they were two blocks away. As I walked home in the same direction the geese flew, I could hear them still pissed off and honking, but I couldn’t see them.

I think I’ve always noticed this, but not so distinctly as today. There must be something about the sound waves from their noises that cuts through the fog. I would assume so they can continue to know where each other are even if they couldn’t see each other.

The geese were heading down stream making a ruckus. I could hear them flying around and remembered that there were few places for them to land. The river further down was already filled with birds and I’m sure no further company was wanted. A half hour later I went in the house. The birds were still squawking loudly.

My mother-in-law was sitting in the living room and commented on the sounds of the geese as I walked into the house. She could hear the noise building out on the river two blocks away even in a closed up house.

Yeah, that was me. I decided to have a little fun with the geese.

“They didn’t sound like they were having fun.”

Bald Eagles on the Fox River Update

Just Fishing and Stuff

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Some days are like that. Nothing all that inspiring except that it’s been beautiful outside. No expectations when walking out the door, just hopes to make a few casts in flowing water that might result in a few fish. It is only March after all.

Had to hike to the river via the long route due to water high enough to make me uncomfortable walking across the river. The railroad tracks I walk along to get there are the same set of tracks that run below my house, miles away. The same trains carrying the same loads, only by me there is no sand on the tracks. Here, for almost a mile, the space between the tracks is nothing but sand.

Thinking like a kid, give me a stretch of railroad tracks free from watchful eyes and I might consider running up to a slow moving train a yanking on the release lever to see what happens. Not that I ever did such horribly illegal, unethical, destructive things, nope, nope, nope.

I knew the fishing was going to be relatively tough, I could tell by the footprints on the shore and the small group hanging out further down and fishing. But I still somehow managed to land 4 smallies and lose a couple more.

Even on an uninspired day it’s hard not to notice massive snapping turtles bumping your leg or seven deer standing on the edge of a tree stand keeping a watchful eye on you. Hard not to notice the waves of sound the frogs are already making as you walk through their terrain.

My first 35 years were spent living within the Chicago City limits. Once a city boy always a city boy I guess, but I’ll never live in one again. I don’t even like the small ones. But something about having an eye tuned to all things urban has me stopping to admire man made objects, especially those that look like they’re deteriorating.

Railroad tracks also seem to be a killing ground. Something is always prowling here. Coyote, fox, deer, muskrat, ground hogs and any number of predators from above. Some never make it.

At night, early spring, always look down at the hand rail before you put your hand down.

A couple of days later it was back to the creeks. Minnows, shiners, darters and creek chubs are coming upstream in larger schools.

Some land based predators are combing the waters edge, but the water based predators have yet to catch on.

Except for the occasional one, either self released or landed.

And then there was the sky, plenty of blue sky with the random fair weather cloud floating by.

A juvenile bald eagle drifted over me for awhile, nine creek miles up from the Fox River. I think that might be the furthest from the river that I’ve seen one. Of course, no picture, they sit still as well as I do.

Another day, a walk around the neighborhood. Soon one big hill will be blanketed in daffodils.

Some tiny blue flowers I’ve never bothered to identify, fill in the bald spots.

And then, there was still more, never ending, blue sky. With those occasional drifting fair weather clouds.

Damn Crows

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The crows have been following me around.

I go out hunting, there they are, hanging around the trees.

Go for a walk, doesn’t matter where, there they are overhead somewhere.

Every morning I have a dozen of them hanging around my front yard.
On the lawn.
In the trees.
Had one sitting on the roof rack of my car the other day.

Talking to me.

The things are creeping me out.

So I looked up the symbolism of the crow.

Crow, Power Animal, Symbol of Sacred Law, Change

Now I’m even more creeped out.

The explanation hit too close to home with things I’ve been saying not only the past few months, but everything I’ve been writing about since I started fishing rivers 15 years ago.

Then there are things in my life that are forcing change.
Forcing me to redefine myself on a variety of different levels, right now.

All my life I’ve told people that I don’t worry about catastrophes, whether natural or man made.
I’ve always said I don’t care what happens and what I have to do.
I’ve always said I don’t care where I live, wherever I am, I’m home.
I’ve always nonchalantly said that no matter what happens or is happening around me, I’ll survive and be just fine.

Then I read this last paragraph.

As crows are adaptable to all environments and will eat almost anything, they can survive in almost any situation. Crow is surrounded by magic, unseen forces and spiritual strength. If crow enters your life, get out of your familiar nest, look beyond your present range of vision, listen to the message(s) in its caw and act accordingly.

Now, I don’t feel so creeped out.

Now, I think I’ll be feeding the crows.

I’m starting to like the idea of seeing them, out in the yard, every morning.

While out Fishing the Other Day

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While I was out fishing a semi urban stretch of the Fox River at the end of January, I was joined by a couple of red tailed hawks and a bald eagle. I wrote it down later like this:

Drifting up stream on the air currents came the large black shape of an eagle. It slowly cruised above the river and occasionally drifted out over the tree tops. The ducks didn’t like any of this. They all lifted off the water. Some seemed to feign an attack on the eagle, a foolhardy gesture at best, but most simply took off squawking.

Once the eagle was out of sight, a couple of red tailed hawks appeared. They seemed to be playing in the treetops feigning bites, then they would take off together to hover over the river. They never got far from each other and it continued to look like they were playing. I’ve never seen them behave like this, usually I don’t see more than one.

Even in somewhat of an urban area these birds have learned to adapt to our presence. The hawks don’t surprise me so much, I’ve been seeing them around for a long time just about everywhere I go. But for an eagle to slip right into these urban areas comes as a surprise. It’s just not something I would have ever expected.

My first sighting of an eagle on the Fox River happened along this same stretch around 2003. Along the shore runs the warmer waters of a treatment plant discharge. During the winter it’s ice free and attracts all kinds of birds. There’s an old dead tree, completely stripped of bark, where the eagle likes to sit and survey the river below. I’ve described this stretch numerous times in the past, but this will do:

For such an urban area, this stretch gives a pretty good illusion of being more remote. On the other side of the river a pretty busy road runs right along the shore. It was just far enough away that any traffic noise is pretty well muffled. Once behind an island it becomes pretty simple to ignore the urban views altogether.

The side with the warm water is a flood plain that’s never been developed. A wide open field of tall grasses, a shore line of trees that create picture perfect undercut banks. Further down the trees become more extensive and cover more of the shore and land. While walking through it, especially in the warmer months, the dense trees and brush obliterate all signs of human artifacts and for a brief time you could be anywhere that people don’t go.

The end of that day had me walking through the field back to my car. I was tracking coyote, which seemed to be tracking squirrel and raccoons. The raccoons seem to take the same paths to and from the river on a regular basis. The squirrel tracks seem to be more sporadic. I’ve heard that they never find 90 percent of the nuts they bury. Their tracks in the snow indicate that they spend a lot of time looking for that 90 percent, even if never found.

From a distance I thought I was seeing pheasant tracks cutting across my path.

When I got up on top of the tracks their size said this was no pheasant. They were as big as my hand. They came from the rivers edge and headed inland. At first I thought they might be from a blue heron, but I’ve never seen a blue heron walk inland like this. I followed the tracks and they took paths through low brush. No 4 foot tall bird would be able to do this. Then at one spot, the tracks disappeared. I looked up the tracks when I got home, definitely an eagle, either out for a stroll or on the hunt.

Further down the trail there were more tracks. These looked just like the others only smaller. This time they appeared out of nowhere and it looked like there was some kind of scuffle.

The scuffle was taken a couple of feet away into some brush. I knew these were the tracks of the red tailed hawk and it was determined to get hold of something.

And then like the eagle tracks, they were gone. Nothing walked away from this scuffle, the victor flew off.

This got me thinking about a trip through West Virginia many years ago. I was on my way to a rod and gun club outside Richmond Virginia for a week to wander woods and fish. I usually went alone and if I was lucky, I would run into no one while there. It was about two in the morning and in the West Virginia mountains I could only pick up National Public Radio, my radio listening choice anyway.

They were discussing The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry:

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I remember being bothered by this. I enjoy the peace and quiet of woods and water without the presence people. I prefer the absence of people most of the time. But the peace of wild things is a human construct. We look out at what we believe is beauty. We immerse ourselves in the silence of our surroundings. Gentle breezes rustling through trees while we lay back on a hammock can lull us into sleep.

This got me thinking, wild things don’t experience peace . . .