ALTON - Great Rivers and Routes Tourism Bureau, the Audubon Center at Riverlands and the National Great Rivers Museum are gearing up for the annual Eagle Ice Festival.
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From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, community members are encouraged to enjoy the free Eagle Ice Festival, complete with activities, crafts and eagle meet-and-greets. Great Rivers and Routes Tourism Bureau will host people at FLOCK Food Truck Park, while the Audubon Center and National Great Rivers Museum will welcome folks to their locations for additional free activities.
“You can go to all three occasions and enjoy our different activities at each site throughout the day,” explained Emily Connor, education manager at the Audubon Center. “It is a really special time for our region to get to see all these birds migrating through the winter and meeting in this confluence area of the rivers.”
Great Rivers and Routes Tourism Bureau
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Great Rivers and Routes Tourism Bureau will set up at FLOCK in downtown Alton. Attendees can enjoy an ice-carving demonstration, live music by Mike Mattingly, food trucks, face painting and more. Old Bakery Beer Company will supply a special Eagle Fest Beer, and a live bald eagle from World Bird Sanctuary will be available for eagle meet-and-greets.
“It’s just a great way to kick off the eagle season in southwest Illinois,” said Cory Jobe, president of Great Rivers and Routes Tourism Bureau. “It’s probably been 20 years or more that we’ve been doing this, and people love it. They come out year after year after year. And the big thing they come for is to see the bald eagle. You can get within three or four feet of this magnificent bird.”
The World Bird Sanctuary handler will share information about bald eagles with the audience. Jobe noted that the Riverbend region sees a huge influx of eagles during the winter months, which also brings in tourists.
“Not only do bald eagles come, but we have visitors from Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri coming to our region to see these eagles,” he said. “Eagle Fest is a great way to showcase the fact that hundreds of American bald eagles migrate to southwest Illinois every winter to come to the relatively warmer waters of southwest Illinois from the very frigid north, and it brings people and visitors to our region that maybe don’t ordinarily come in the winter.”
Every Saturday throughout the months of January and February, Great Rivers and Routes also offers eagle-watching tours for $15, which start at the Alton Visitors Center. You can purchase tickets here. Check out their Eagle Ice Fest Facebook event page to learn more.
Audubon Center at Riverlands
Located at 301 Riverlands Way in West Alton, MO, the Audubon Center at Riverlands will welcome community members for Eagle Ice Fest from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. They will have an interactive guided trail with different stations and activities, all focused on eagles.
Attendees can also enjoy s’mores and campfires, with several local vendors and other partners like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers available to answer questions. Emily Connor said people are mostly excited to meet Liberty, a bald eagle who will be onsite courtesy of World Bird Sanctuary. These meet-and-greet sessions cost $10, and you can also take a guided bird hike for $10.
“Our mission is to connect people to our Great Rivers Confluence and just the rich diversity of habitat and animals that we have in this bistate area,” Connor added. “I think winter is a beautiful time to come out, because it’s kind of a peak time for migrating birds whenever they overwinter in our region. Just being at the center of one of the major flyways in our country, we get a significant amount of birds.”
Eagle Ice Fest kicks off the Birds of Winter program at Audubon, which will continue through February. Audubon will offer guided tours, events and more in the next two months. Visit their official website at Riverlands.Audubon.org or their Eagle Ice Fest Facebook event page for more information.
National Great Rivers Museum
Eagle Ice Fest attendees can also check out the National Great Rivers Museum at 2 Lock and Dam Way in Alton. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., they will have guided tours of the lock and dam, education stations, crafts, campfires and spotting scopes for eagle-watching.
“It’s really great to have any kind of outreach opportunity like this that brings in a whole lot of people,” said Elise Ratcliff. “We want them to be aware of our museum, of the things that we offer, what the Corps of Engineers does as a whole, as well as just our local ecology, what people can do to help promote a healthy ecosystem here along the river, and also just learn about some of the animals that live around the river as well as our navigation corridors and just everything related to the river.”
Every activity at the National Great Rivers Museum is free. Ratcliff encourages people to dress warmly for the lock and dam tours. Last year, she said they saw “just an insane number of eagles.”
She also noted that NGRM will host Ice Jam at the Dam in February, and they will also participate in Clarksville Eagle Days in Missouri later this month. For more information about upcoming events and Eagle Ice Fest, visit their official website at MTRF.org or their Eagle Ice Fest Facebook event page.
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