Bald Eagles

[cwc87]

I have been seeing eagles at the MDC access's on meramec eating sucker corpses from giggers. Scavengers cleaning up mans mess.

[Al Agnew]

You'll see a lot of them below the dams in the winter eating the shad coming through the dam. Even 20 years or more ago, you could see a half dozen or more below Clearwater Dam anytime you went there in the winter. But now in the winter you will see several every time you go just about anywhere on the larger Ozark streams. And nests are definitely showing up on many, if not all, the larger streams. I can remember one of the first nests, which was on Establishment Creek fairly close to where it runs into the Mississippi, and the people who knew about it kept it quiet because they were afraid of people harassing the eagles. There was also an early nest on the Eleven Point just a short distance below Thomasville. And about ten years or more ago, I came upon a nest on the upper Bourbeuse. The two eaglets were just learning to fly, and one was still in the nest while the other was sitting on the bank half in the brush under the nest. When I got close to it, it flew across the river and crash-landed on the other bank.

[Tim Smith]

I don't know...to eat a gar would be like trying to gnaw through a leather cowboy boot.

Cajuns love gar. Snip down the side with wire cutters and dig in.

I was just around Puget Sound and bald eagles are as common as crows there.

Osprey and brown pelicans are other species that benefited from the DDT ban.

Belize has been using DDT until recently (and probably still is unofficially). They had an anti-malaria program that required families to let the government spray DDT on the insides of their houses.

It seemed to work...but man. That's pretty intrusive.

[Quillback]

Nothing like walking into your house and getting a lungful off DDT, but I guess it beats getting malaria.

[Ham]

I see Otter dung on all of the streams I fish now. But I really don't catch any fish out of those streams anymore. Another great revival of a lost species.

We saw a family of otters playing on a recent float I did with Cajunangler. Our numbers were way down too. We only got 202 fish (mostly smallies) to hand that day.

[BilletHead]

One at Four Rivers conservation area. A young one, I like seeing them especially when you can get this close. Took the photo during the tropical depression from hurricane Isaac,

BilletHead

[Greasy B]

I don't know if they'll ever be as common as crows around the ozarks but the last 5 years or so I see so many I hardly ever bother to point them out to whomever I'm fishing with. You know DDT may well be used again in the US if some mosquito born disease outbreak happens. I would guess it would limited and local.