THIRD ANNUAL FROZEN RIVER WALK

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6  FREE

1:00-2:30 pm

AGHAMING PARK AND PRESERVE

Meet at the Wisconsin end of the High Wagon Bridge

(Access from Latsch Island, Winona MN)

Bring kids, binoculars, warm clothes, cookies to share.

Mississippi River Revival will host a 90-minute walk with Richie Swanson, who chronicled nature at Aghaming during www.RiverBirdBlog.com, February-July 2007.  We will take a winter look at rare ecosystems, floodplain forest and emergent marshes, home of:

State-threatened red-shouldered hawk

The river’s most threatened duck, the lesser scaup

U.S.’s most swiftly declining bird, the rusty blackbird

The continent’s most swiftly declining warbler, the cerulean

Visit secret niches of turtles, otters, foxes, mink, other wildlife.

Discuss city policy, river issues, and the proposal for the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife & Refuge to manage Aghaming, 1010 acres, a John Latsch gift, city-owned wetlands.

MORE INFO ON MISSISSIPPI RIVER REVIVAL

Since 1981, MRR and its volunteers have organized in-school education, in-habitat education, hands-on education, river cleanups, water-quality monitoring, mussel rescues, river outings for kids and citizens, interpretive nature walks, river-related art projects and festivals, also activities related to local agriculture and watersheds.  We have engaged citizens and government agencies such as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Upper Mississippi National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, Winona county, city of Winona, the Land Stewardship Program and Minnesota DNR in dialogues about the environment, including the protection of wildlife species and clean water for future generations.  We have organized at the grassroots level to keep citizens involved in the democracy and decisions of c! rucial issues.

THE WALK

We’ll peer up at granddaddy cottonwoods, perches for eagles and nest-niches for the cerulean warbler, which lost an endangered species petition 2006.  We’ll visit swamp white oaks, food source for acorn-loving wood ducks, deer, red-headed woodpeckers.  We’ll view a courtship limb of the yellow-billed cuckoo, which lost an endangered species petition 1999.  Fox tracks may lead us to urine deposits, revealing secrets about food caches.  Upturned roots of fallen trees will illustrate forest-regeneration challenges and bird-nest ingredients.  We’ll walk across stopover sites of the lesser scaup, which faces troubles from the zone of hypox! ia at the river’s mouth to Alaskan nesting grounds impacted by global warming.  The rusty blackbird (99% decline) winters in remnants of ivory-billed woodpecker habitat on the Lower Miss.  We’ll walk where it forages at Aghaming during migration.  See a prothonotary warbler’s nest-stump!  Otter trails etc.

Richie’s chronicle of bird life at Aghaming is at www.RiverBirdBlog.com.  Other bird articles and fiction are at www.WarblingRichie.com, including Flood of Song & Creator Bird.