We left the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and continued down the river road to a campground in Prairie Du Chien, WI area for a one night stay. The wagon-masters and tail-gunners cooked us up a good meal of baked ham, pasta salad, Mexican corn, rolls and dessert. You can't beat having a good meal ready for you after you arrive. These two couples really do work hard at making sure we enjoy our time with them and the trip. As I stated before, we are taking one of Americas Byways and we do not spend much time on interstates or freeways, instead, travel on county and state roads as we follow the Mississippi. One couple in our group, from New Hampshire, traveled with the tail gunners in Alaska just a few months ago. Our tail-gunners were the wagon-masters on that trip.
On the way to our next stop, were were able to tour the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN. What a gem of an exhibit and presentation. Bald eagles love this area since the river does not freeze on this section and they are able to fish year around. MN is the year around home for bald eagles and the golden eagles winter here and summer in Canada.
Here are some interesting facts that we heard at the presentation: The bald eagles are made for fishing, one talon can produce 400 psi, for comparison, a human can squeeze their hand at about 70 psi. A bald eagle has 14 neck bones that allow it to turn its head 270 degrees compared to a humans 160 to 180 degrees. This is good since bald eagles eyes are fixed. Their eyesight is amazing, to put it in perspetive, they can see an ant on the ground from 100 feet in the air. This is the reason that Latsch, the eagle shown below is here at the center. Her left eye was blinded in the nest and she has no depth perception with which to hunt.
Here is an example of the head rotation of an eagle. She is looking over her back at us.
Females are about 1/3 larger than the males although there is some overlap. Mating could qualify as an extreme sport. A pair of potential mates will soar hundreds of feet into the air, lock talons and free fall back to earth. Let go to soon and the pair will not mate, let go to late and they are known as road kill! Eagles are "nest faithful" and will use the same nest for years unless it is destroyed. They are also thieves, preferring to steal another's nest rather than build a new one. This is understandable since the nests are 3-6 feet across and 3 to 6 feet deep on average. Nest are built 70 feet or higher in trees and can weigh up to 300 pounds. Eagles are extremely clean and do not soil their nests. Instead, they lift their tail and can defecate 6 feet out so that the nest is not soiled. After hatching eaglets grow at an amazing rate, they grow to 1.5 feet in height in just 6 weeks. To put it in perspective, this is like a child going from newborn to 12 years old in the same time! They are full grown at 12 weeks. A mature eagle is about 2.5 feet tall and weighs about 10 pounds, they are covered with 7000 feathers and the weight of the feathers are twice what their bone structure is. Truly a beautiful bird and impressive.
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