Soy

We had heard tales of hordes of bald eagles feasting on trumpeter swans near Lake Pepin, WI. Who could resist? Reality turned out a little different of course. There are many bald eagles in the area, but perhaps not surprisingly, we didn't see one today, much less witness an epic battle between an eagle and a swan. I have seen plenty of eagles in my time (mostly in British Columbia where they are common) so I wasn't too disappointed.

There were some captive "education" eagles to be seen at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN, right across the Mississippi from Lake Pepin. These are birds that have been injured and nursed back to health but are deemed unlikely to survive if reintroduced into the wild. (Typically an eagle feeding on roadkill is hit by a car.) Unfortunately the eagles were all housed indoors, and although pictures were allowed, the dim lighting and and awful painted green and blue background did not make for a very good shot!

Lake Pepin is famous as the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder, auther of the "Little House' series. The Little House in the Woods is reconstructed close to the original site. It is very ordinary farmland today, and the soybean field in the picture was directly behind it.

Considering the importance of soybeans, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what a soybean crop looked like. (I could recognize the beans as when I popped open one of the pods though.) A soybean field (and we saw many) is brown and scraggly at this time of year and decidedly unromantic. Where are the amber waves of grain?

Near Lake Pepin, WI