Fox River Eagles – Winter 2009

I saw my first Fox River eagle in the winter about 6 years ago. It was drifting lazily on a slight wind above open water somewhere between Montgomery and Oswego. It could have been 7 years ago. At 53 years old, it seems that my ability to keep track of passing time is deteriorating. I’ve mentioned this to my parents. They just laugh. Apparently it gets worse.

A friend of mine had seen the eagle a few days earlier in that same area. This was a time when I fished the Fox throughout the winter. When ice had crept onto and over sections of the river, you could always count on the outflow of the crap plant between Montgomery and Oswego to keep a section of the river open.

The outflow is crystal clear year round, with its summer temperature around 70 degrees no matter how warm the river got. During the winter the outflow was pretty much constantly at 55 degrees. You could take 2 steps into the flow of the river and get a temperature reading of 33 degrees. Back in the outflow, 55 degrees. It was this way for a good half mile down. I’m sure it went further, but a half mile is the furthest I ever went.

This is where the eagle liked to hang out. When there were thick ice flows on the water and a thick layer of ice had covered the rest of the river, a sometimes dense layer of steam hugged the west shore attesting to the waters warmth. This warmth attracted all kinds of fish. It was not unusual to go out in January and catch a combination of smallmouth and largemouth bass, white bass, bluegills, crappie, catfish, walleye, carp, suckers and shad.

Near the end of the half mile stretch of ice free water stood a tall dead tree stripped bare of its bark. In this tree, the eagle liked to perch on a branch hanging out over the river. It was a perfect location. From that view point it could look down on all the fish species mentioned above, as well as a large number of geese and ducks that were also attracted to the warmer water. At that point it only had to decide on two things, was it hungry and what did it have a taste for. A veritable predators smorgasbord.

Every year during the winter I could count on the eagle cruising the area in search of something to eat. During the warmer months, it was nowhere to be found.

March 2005 found me building out what would become my short lived canoe livery on the shore of the Fox River in Montgomery. Early in that month I was out front working when I heard ducks flying up stream making a hell of a racket. I looked up to see the eagle flying up stream. It barely had to move it’s large powerful wings to keep up a good pace. About 20 feet behind it were a half dozen ducks squawking louder than I had ever heard ducks squawk before. Their wings were beating in a wild frenzy compared to the eagle as they chased it down. They all flew up stream toward the dam and disappeared from sight.

A few minutes later I heard the racket coming back down stream. There was the eagle, again barely moving it’s wings to keep up a steady pace. Right behind it were the ducks still squawking wildly. Suddenly it seemed like the eagle had had enough of the noisy followers. It threw up its wings and stalled in mid air, did a somersault, flipped over and was suddenly flying directly into the small flock of ducks. I have never heard ducks make a sound much like a terrified scream, but this they did as they took off in 6 different directions to get away from annoyed eagle.

A very impressive simple show of strength.

The end of 2005 found me living in Yorkville, a half mile down stream of the dam and a two minute walk up the hill from the rivers edge. Because of the nearby dam, this stretch of the river is always open and never freezes during the winter. It draws hundreds of geese and ducks, plus a wide variety of other birds. A few miles down stream was a bridge over the river. From the bridge you could see the mouth of Big Rock Creek. If the river was iced over in this stretch, the water coming from the creek was always open. Not far up the river, Little Rock Creek flows into Big Rock. It too is never iced over. This means that they are probably both spring fed.

I took the following picture the other day showing this phenomena. May be a little hard to see the creek, but the river is covered in ice while the creek has none.

Labor Day weekend, 2008, I was fishing far upstream on Little Rock Creek. At the time I wrote this down:

“Strange, the creek was only 60 degrees. That means it’s spring fed. I guess I’ll have to go find them.”

It’s rare that any water around here gets to that temperature that time of year. It’s usually more like bath water around then. I pretty much knew the creek was spring fed, but I was just getting around to proving it to myself.

Getting back to the eagles. . .

About a month after moving to Yorkville I was crossing the bridge near the mouth of Big Rock. The river was iced over, but the creek was open. Two eagles were drifting over the area close to the open water. Near Montgomery, I had never seen more than one eagle at a time. It was a treat to see a pair.

When I think about it, in three years I’ve never seen these creeks iced over. By comparison, Mill Creek, in the Batavia area, almost freezes solid. I have pictures of that and have walked far up stream in the winter months to ice fish some of the deeper pools I know.

I have seen the eagles every winter since then. Again, they disappear during the warmer months. Then this year was the most sightings I’ve had so far. In December, I was driving over the bridge further up stream on Big Rock Creek. Across the cattle fields, off in the distance was a huge nest high in the trees. First thought, that was the biggest damn squirrel nest I had ever seen. Then it hit me that at 3 or 4 feet across, it had to be the eagles nest.

What a perfect place to build a nest. It was overlooking Big Rock Creek and only about a half mile from where it joins the Fox. I know that throughout the winter there is some kind of fish species hanging out at the mouth. Especially carp and suckers. I also took a couple of pictures of the open creek. Geese again floating on the current. The ducks had taken off when they saw me coming. From an eagles stand point, what a perfect place to call home.

I happen to have this bad habit of smoking cheap cigars. The need to have one hits me every few hours and I wind up outside the house I rent. As I mentioned, I live just up the hill from the edge of the river. I can’t see the river itself from this vantage point but can easily see the wall of trees that make up the river valley. In mid January I was standing out there puffing away when I saw two large birds drifting along at tree top level. They turned south toward me, drifted down and landed in the tree in my front yard. I was stunned. I had no camera. They perched there for barely 30 seconds, jumped up and drifted back to the river and turned down stream. I’m sure I’ll never see that again.

At the end of January, my daughter and I stopped on the bridge over the Big Rock Creek and took the following pictures.

The untrained eye will say it’s a squirrels nest. The trained eye will be able to see even from a distance, that’s no squirrel nest. My daughter and I stood on the bridge debating whether to make the run along the creek to get a better picture. For me, that decision is simple. I’ve gone up that creek fishing well beyond where the nest was. Land owners believe they own the creeks, federal law says otherwise and I follow the federal laws. Landowners own up to the yearly high water mark and that’s it.

But cattle and bulls don’t know that.

We didn’t see either of those creatures around, but I wasn’t going to take chances with my daughter, though it wasn’t really her I was worried about. She’s on the school cross country team and runs like the wind. Me on the other hand, runs like a light breeze that couldn’t blow out a candle. I didn’t want her to be traumatized by seeing her dad trampled to death.

So we settled for the above pictures.

Even though I no longer have the interest to fish through the cold months, I still spend a fair amount of time outdoors. My daughters and I explore all the public land we can find all along the river and nearby creeks. After taking the pictures of the nest, we went to explore Hollenback Creek on the new forest preserve property. I had fished at the mouth of it many years ago and our goal was to follow it down to the Fox. We weren’t prepared for just how daunting that would be and agreed to come back in the warmer months and make that journey when we could walk down the middle of the creek.

So we wound up at the old Millbrook bridge just in time to see the two eagles drift lazily down the river. There wasn’t a lot of open water, so they drifted off to the north and disappeared over the tree line. Truly beautiful sight.

An hour and a half later, heading home, we were crossing over the Big Rock Creek bridge again. As we drove past, the eagle jumped up out of its nest and flew off. Of course no camera was at the ready. We circled back quickly, parked and waited, camera at the ready. After 15 minutes we realized we blew our only chance to capture the majestic bird.

In the following week, my wife was driving over the bridge and found a half dozen cars parked. People had binoculars and cameras at the ready. That was the first time any one else had been seen looking for the eagles.

A week later I had my daughter again. We went out toward the end of the day. The plan was to camp out on the bridge and wait for the eagle to come home for the evening. As we walked along the bridge we both commented we couldn’t see the nest. Then we saw a chunk of it, about half way down the tree. Now just a pile of sticks. We were heart broken, forgot to take pictures and talked about whether or not they would rebuild it in the same place.

The following pictures are the most recent shots of where the the nest was. I tried to take them from the exact vantage point of the other shots so I can compare the two.

The nest is now completely gone. No remnant of it could be found anywhere. When you compare the before and after photos, it almost looks like the tree that it was in has disappeared. The sky line looks bare in the after photo. I wonder if the tree itself had broken up.

Still not up for trying to outrun cattle, so I may never know.