During the cold snap two weeks ago, I went to Starved Rock to see if I could shoot some pictures of the Bald Eagles that winter near the dam on the Illinois River this time of the year. The eagles hang around dams in winter as the dam breaks up the ice and therefore the river rarely freezes over. This give as nice clean area in the river to fish. However, when I was there only a small part of the river, quite far away from the bank, was left clear of ice. It looked like the eagles were off to the Missouri River with its larger dams. At Starved Rock, I only saw one juvenile Bald Eagle hanging around and with most of the river encased in ice, the open water was too far away to get a good shot. However, there were plenty of cardinals around and I got a nice shot of this female with a seed of some sort in her beak.
