My Corner Online

 

Loess Bluff National Wildlife Refuge (Missouri Conservation Area)

Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge is in Holt County, Missouri. We visited on December 19, 2024.

Here is a snippet of the bird count for December 17, just two days before we arrived, and the Trumpeter Swan count was 3,779! The Eagle count was 611! I had been trying to time it just right to visit Loess Bluffs for the first time when the migration count was high and I was well pleased with the day we arrived. In addition, we were told by some others there that the day before and the week before the temperatures had been so cold that the birds were not very active, but the day we were there it got up to 55 degrees and there was lots of activity! We personally saw hundreds of eagles ourselves! I was so pleased with our timing and experience.

It was posted that this week was the most Eagles seen in 2024 so far and that the Trumpeter Swans were near record breaking.

As seen in the above video, we visited the headquarters first and then we went on the auto tour.

This map shows the hiking trails which we did not get to explore. It leaves us something to do should we ever go back.

This graphic shows the migration flyway which I found interesting, especially since it covers most of Missouri, including where I live in Southeast Missouri.

In the headquarters (Visitor's Center) there is a map and they have it marked where the Eagles are located and it was true and helpful.

In the beginning I did my Merlin app and all it heard were Trumpeter Swans and Mallards. I found it so much fun to actually hear a trumpeter swan trumpeting!

This is a photo of the "Loess Bluffs" which we found were common in this area of Missouri as we did visit other places as well and witnessed them. I had never heard of "loess" before today to understand the definition.

There were a lot of photographers out and I liked being among like-minded people who were acting oddly the same way as me!

Near the end of the auto drive we stopped and walked out on this boardwalk.

This is the sunset overlooking the auto tour route at Loess Bluff and we did go around for a second quick loop in the evening. We were glad we had gone during the middle of the day as there was much more activity then than at sunset.

I took a lot of photos, and share a lot here, but I can still only share so many.

We were told that the birds like to perch on the muskrat mounds, and so I was excited the first time I saw it. I find it awesome how God's creation works together to sustain itself.

There are water fowl as far as you can see!

I love how they all line up. One is all white and another has orange on the beak.

Two by two! All in pairs!

There is one bird on the muskrat mound and the rest are in the water. It's almost like it feels extra special today to have its own mound. In the distance on the land you can see a lot of eagles and one of them is on a muskrat mound as well.

This Eagle was special to me. It was the first Eagle I saw up close and on a muskrat mound. I parked the truck and got out to film and photograph the bird. No sooner than I began the video, he decided to take off in flight! I did not get any photos of it flying, but I did get a video of it in flight. Some other photographers told me they had waited 20 minutes with their cameras pointed at the Eagle waiting for it to move, and it was my fortune to not have to wait.

The Eagle turned its head and posed different poses for me. When it flew, it flew from one muskrat mound to another. I waited a while for it to do something else excited and decided that the place was so big that I had to move on to see what was next.

There were many Eagles up in the trees. My 800 lens was better than average to capture the images of them, but not quiet good enough for the close-up photos. I saved a few as shot to show size and distance from me, but I did post-crop a lot of the photos. At least my lens takes sharp photos even after I crop them.

This appears to be a grown Eagle and a juvenile Eagle. From what I can tell online, the juvenile would be about 2 1/2 years old.

I had fun trying to capture the trumpeter swans flying together through the air. I would lock in the focus and try to follow them along with the lens.

As I followed the trumpeter swans all the way to landing, I began to hear a repetitive sound that brought delight to my heart. I thought all of the birds were landing at the same time and would make one big splash, but they did not as they were actually following each other with a slight synchronization moment behind the one in front of them.

I love remembering about the trumpeter swans and how they flew in twos and threes and then landed in quick succession with what became a familiar rhythm of “splash, splash” or “splash, splash, splash.” They never landed in unison, but in succession. And yet ironically in my mind, their succession of movement was also distinctly unified.

I caught the splash with the photo which is something else I was attempting to do. I was also amazed how not long after landing, they would quickly blend in with the other birds and you could not discern the pairs that were together any longer.

Here is another series of photos of three birds flying together and landing.

You can see an Eagle on a muskrat mound in the background on the left of this photo. There were so many Eagles always in the distance that an unobservant eye might miss them.

I like this photo.

. . . and there they are, landing in succession rather than in unison. I caught that which I heard well in this photo.

I took a lot of photos of Eagles, but none were show-stoppers to me, but I was still excited to be able to photograph them. This one had its puffy white tail pointed at me.

This bird next was huge and a grand example of how they build their nests up year after year and they continue to get larger and larger.

I caught an Eagle flying into the nest.

This is a close up of it in the nest, but again, they seemed just like my dogs in that they always wanted to point their tail ends at me!

There are two Eagles in this photo.

Finally, a head! This bird was looking at me looking at it.

I captured with my lens some of the birds flying, but they were so far away it did not do them justice. I wanted to capture a good photo of them flying, but it was not to be.

This one is looking at me like it is royalty and I am invading its kingdom! I like the swoop of the branch making a line for the eye to follow in the photo.

After a while, though, they all began to look the same. There were so many of them.

This was the view at the end of the boardwalk which we walked down.