My World: Whitewater State Park

Last Saturday I participated in the annual golden eagle survey that takes place in Southern Minnesota, Wisconsin as well as Northern Iowa. The survey is sponsored by the National eagle Center which is located in Wabasha, MN. Since I did not have a route of my own I was given the option of joining a group at the National Eagle Center or meeting the group that was going to be searching out at Whitewater State Park.

Since Whitewater is known the be one of the best places in Minnesota to see golden eagles, the only place that is better would be Hawk Ridge during migration, I decided to head down there. The weather was pretty poor that day with a lot of blowing snow and the roads were slick so it took me longer to get down there then I had planned but I arrived right in time to join the group. We went out for a few hours but we did not see any birds that we could confirm as a golden eagle.

Since I did not have very good luck with the weather on my first try out to whitewater I decided to make another trip down there on the 25th. This time the sun was shinning, although the temps were still below zero, and there was a lot more to look at.

Like this opossum that I found sunny itself on the side of the road.

The habitat were we are looking for golden eagles are called goat hills. They are hills that are facing to the southwest. Because they are facing southwest they get more sun which means less moisture and less vegetation. This leaves gaps for the eagles to hunt in. You can see the openings in the picture of the goat hill above.

I did not see any golden eagles on my second trip to Whitewater either, 88 eagles were counted during the survey on the 17th or in the week following, but I did see a few bald eagles.

There were also at least three bald eagle nests which were visible from the road.

Since I was striking out on the golden eagles I decided to head over to check out the visitors center.

Behind the visitors center they had some feeders that were attracting quite a few birds.

They had some larger birds such as blue jays, cardinals, hairy and downy woodpeckers.

There were a lot of smaller song birds also such as dark-eyed juncos, house finch and purple finch.
It was also fun to see goldfinch who had begun to molt back into their breeding plumage. This is a positive sign that winter will end and before we know it spring will be here.