Snow Crows

This afternoon I stopped at the Carl Spindler Marina in East Peoria to look for ice shelves. When the Illinois River floods and freezing weather follows, ice forms at a high water level. Then, as the water level falls, ice slabs settle down over whatever lies underneath, for example, over the boardwalk path near the Marina. The slabs in the picture are about 2 inches thick. Ice can also cling to tree trunks as series of shelves. Though not as spectacular as the ones I saw at this location about a year ago, there were shelves on the trees. There were a large number of crows at the marina when I arrived (perhaps as many as I have ever seen at one time). They seemed to be working their way south along the river, investigating holes in the ice. What I thought was interesting was the marks that they left in the half inch of fluffy morning snow over the ice - not only were they leaving footprints, but also wing and tail marks in the snow. One set of marks looks like a crow snow angel!

In other news, the Pekin version, of Extreme Makover: Home Edition was on tonight. I was preceded by one hour of local coverage of the event, in which it was announced that the family did get their mortgage covered.