Sightings of a dozen birds in a small area are not uncommon. For several weeks last January, eagles roosting in the Mid-Hudson region were flying downriver to open water by day in search of forage. By the end of the month, extensive ice had led to eagle congregations of record numbers, as many as fifty, south of the Hudson Highlands. In their quest for open water, bald eagles find allies in the five power plants located along a thirty-mile stretch of the tidal Hudson from Danskammer Point in Orange County to Bowline Point in Rockland County. Their warmwater outflows produce ice-free areas that attract waterfowl and may provide an easy meal of fish stunned by rapid temperature changes.
Eagles sit on feeding perches along the shore eying both fish and waterfowl.
If you love winter, January offers matchless opportunity. Putting on snowshoes, cross-country skis, or ice skates and traveling along the Hudson, binoculars in hand, can exhilarating. This is also a month that requires flexibility. If winter arrives on time, frosting the landscape, it may seem that there is an eagle in every tree and on every ice floe. But if the weather stays mild, it will require some patience to view the show that will surely come, in this month or the next.