Visit Michelle at the joyful Nature Notes Thursday to learn something you may not know.

Last Saturday we went to Pella again. This time it was to see the eagles that visit the area. They wait in the trees above the dam because the smaller fish are stunned when they come out of the chute. Only on Saturday I didn't see much water coming over the dam. While there aren't many eagles in these trees in the photo below, before we got closer I counted 37. There were no less than 18 in another spot further up the river.

Here is a shot of the dam with the eagles (they're little black dots in the trees) waiting for stunned fish. Yum.
There were quite a few geese of various shapes and sizes and I'm sure Michelle would be able to explain them all to me, but I just thought they were pretty.

Something odd did happen. There was a Canada goose in the current of the water and it had its head down as if looking into the water and it was spinning around and around and around in a tight circle while running down the river in the current. It was not circling around, guys. It was spinning like crazy. I was afraid it was in trouble because that's what I do: I worry about stuff like this. So I watched it and it would bring its head up now and then. We crossed over the water on a bridge and then I noticed it again way back up towards the dam spinning like a top in the current. Unless there were three geese in the same situation it seemed to me that this was the same bird spinning down the river and then flying back up to the dam and doing it all over again.

Does anyone know what it was doing?