It took us a long time to notice them, but across the Mississippi from here there were more than just stuffed toy eagles at Lock & Dam #13.

Photo Album: Click each thumbnail for a larger image or to view slideshow. The brutal winter left these fields in the driftless hills of Jo Daviess County covered in snow. We explored Galena's icy streets for a while. Taking the alleyways afforded us a view of Galena we never experienced before. Not an eagle spotted in the trees along Blackjack Road. Our first eagle was a juvenile munching on fish in a tree in Mississippi Palisades SP near Savanna, IL. Crossing the bridge to Sabula, IA, where we saw many eagles last year. No luck in 2014. We did find this "eagle" choked in the ice in Sabula's port. A back-road scene south of Savanna, IL. The road to the dam was icy as a light flurry came down. Lock & Dam #13 at Fulton, IL, was the first ice-free part of the river we could find. 'I found an eagle and it seems close-by!' Most of the eagles were perched in trees at the Fulton dam, but there were a few fishing and flying about. Dusk at Lock & Dam #14 where we saw a few eagles flying overhead. The view of LeClaire, IA, from the Illinois side of the Mississippi. Web Photo Display by VisualLightBox.com v4.8

Movie Clips: It was hard to still-shoot eagles so sometimes we tried grainy video.

Statistics:

Dates: a gray and icy Wed., February 12, 2014, temps in the upper 10's.

Areas Explored: Northwest IIllinois

Transportation: 2009 Grand Caravan

Eagle Count: Mississippi Pallisades SP (Savanna, IL): 1;Lock & Dam #13 (Fulton, IL): 5; Lock & Dam #14 (Hampton, IL): 5 for a total of 11. (This is a loss of 6 from last year.)

Hawk Count: Saw way more red-tailed hawks than bald eagles this year.

See 2013's successful hunt here.

Trip Diary:

The 2014 winter was brutal and the snow was record-level deep across the Midwest. It took a long time to find a day suitable for standing outside for even a minute or two. Finding openings in the ice was tougher than ever for us and the eagles. In mid-February a bit of a warm spell hit, if you count temps in the teens to be warm. It was enough to break up some of the ice around certain dams. Our search this year went further south than in year's past because dams in the north were blocked solid. We were led by the Army Corps of Engineers' eagle count this year to new hunting spots. While we saw almost as many eagles as we did last year, they were all far away and hard to photograph.

We began by walking the historic streets of Galena looking for apples and goodies to reward us for the long car ride across northern Illinois. Usually we head west from here, but this time we rode south along the dangerous curves of Blackjack Road and past the Chestnut Mountain Resort into the hills and bluffs. We stopped at Savanna, IL, to look for eagles from atop the bluffs at Mississippi Palisades SP. We did find one juvenile here chowing down on a fish in a tree near the entrance to the park.  Across the river are islands and bayous, but everything was packed solid in ice, even the once eagle-laden Sabula Island.

So we continued southward, eventually landing upon Lock & Dam #13 near Fulton, IL. At first, we saw nothing, but upon third glance through binoculars we spotted a whole bunch of eagles sitting in trees and flying across the river. Some were fishing the small break in the ice at the dam wall. They were all very far away, but seeing them glide around made it all worthwhile.

We were losing daylight so we raced south into the Quad Cities and Lock & Dam #14 at Hampton, IL. In the forest preserve that surrounds the dam, we heard eagles singing and saw them flying like ghosts in the dusky sky. Here, so far south, the river was mostly ice free and there were probably more eagles than anywhere on the trip, but the sun left us unable to see them. As darkness took over, we were forced to head home across I-88 until 2015's trip.