The skies were grim, the snow was building around my tires, and a cold, stiff wind flooded the car as I tried to take some images, shaking as much from the jaw-dropping moment as from the elements. The “teenager,’’ whose mottled head was just beginning to take on the full white of a mature eagle, alternately munched and stared back at me.
That was on my first visit, in December 2007. I came back a month later. Then the skies were clear blue. It had been a mesmerizing day of seeing eagles perched in Keokuk and afterward crossing the river into Illinois and driving south several miles to Warsaw. In that little town on the bluffs, not only are eagles perched, but also you have a National Geographic-level perspective of the birds soaring below you over cakes of ice.
From Warsaw, I returned to Victory Park, looking for more eagles. Through a tree, I saw a silhouette rising from the river. The bird crested the tree and flew right over my head, gripping a meaty gizzard shad in its talons. The size and weight of the fish was clearly a bit much for even this big bird. It flew low in laboriously slow motion, until it hauled its catch over to a tree a football field away. Again, my jaw dropped, and with teeth still chattering, I thought, ohmigod.
Last January I came back with two buddies. Bill Meyer, a retired photographer for the Milwaukee Journal, and Clayborn Benson, a retired television photographer for Milwaukee’s NBC affiliate, were my photojournalism mentors when I was in college. While photography stayed a hobby for me, they became award-winning professionals. I wasn’t sure how impressed they would be after driving nearly six hours to where the Mississippi marries Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri.
