In 1979 I worked on the river in La Crosse, I would hardly ever see a bald eagle. The species has really made a come back. In the early ninties I really noticed how the numbers I could count in spring and fall went up.
Couple years ago, I was going by a part of the river, the ice was breaking up, spring of course, and must of counted between 25 to 30 in one area.
Yea, they've really made a come-back!
Last fall I spent about 4 hours in a blind on a ridge overlooking the river. It was a pretty good day for migrating, and the birds were using the lift generated along the ridge as they moved to the south. In those few hours we saw over 80 redtails (which is what we were really looking for), several coopers and sharp-shinned hawks, and many bald eagles. We actually got kind of bored with the eagles, and quit counting them when we hit 300 (it's like a conveyor belt of birds moving from north to south along the ridges). We were really hoping to see a golden, but only saw adult and immature balds. It would have been neat to see a few peregrines too, but we didn't. I've actually seen three peregrines in the Appleton/Oshkosh area during fall migration.
