So, 3rd time in 4 days, and here I am back at Squaw Creek before sunrise. To my partial surprise, the snow geese did come back! So did the clouds though, and they would be an issue for the first half of the day. All the images from this day were taken with my 100-400L, which I thought did better than the 300mm F2.8 with 2x converter attached. The above is probably a couple second shutter. That is the main reason to be there before sunrise, to mess with the longer shutters in the twilight. The wind didn't help things though. It would be gusting over 40 mph later in the day. It is flat out nuts to me what the wind and warmer air did to this ice cover in just one day. Sure the birds added some heat, but this was mostly the work of 55-60F highs and strong winds all day. It would splash the water up on the ice and just help in the rapid melting. Just look right now, there is only the small area out there the ducks have open. It was a smidge more open than the day before, just from a warmer night, but still largely all frozen over.

You can barely make out the eagle flying over the ducks in the middle of the picture.

This was kind of cool, but I just wasn't close enough. A long shutter would really blur the ducks in the water, as the ones on the ice stood still. The ones in the water were being blow north.

That is kind of cool, lol. About a two second shutter. As the snow geese flap, their wings are at the top arc longer than when pushing down and returning, so they show up more there. A couple bald eagles can be seen watching over them on the ice.

Morning light doing its thing once again, even with the good deal of clouds.

Moon set about an hour later this morning than the one before, and didn't work as well. And of course I don't have the 600mm setup this time.

Today was photographers day or something. I've never seen so many huge lenses in my life(not these obviously). Some cars had more than one pointing out it at one time. All of us in this spot were shooting a bald eagle perched in the tree. Must have been 7 groups of photographers stop here while I was here. They'd get out and set up tripods and do you think the eagle cared? Hell no. It just sat there. I sat here for 30 minutes staring through my eye piece waiting for it to take flight, but do you think it would? Hell no. I finally gave up. It was so windy at times, it was perched like it was actually flying. It would lean forward into the wind. That is my driver's side mirror btw.

Got ducks?! Just a sick number of mallards. This went left and right like this forever. That bald eagle looks like it has a machine gun attached, the way the ducks take off as it flies over. Go to the next page from this day, here on Page 2. Some much better images to convey how many ducks and geese on the next two pages.

*Warning, the last image on the page gets a little more graphic, for those that won't like that...nothing too obvious anyway*   Duck, duck,..............duck! This particular image there was evidently some spray left in the air towards the bottom. They are just illuminated differently. The ice now has a lot of water on/splashing over it.

I should count all those just to see how many that is. Should! One could do it with the full sized image, it would just be rather distant to something fun.

Ok, duck, duck,.........goose for this one. A few Canadians can be seen.

Running out of ice. It was just impressive as hell to see this place turning back to water in one afternoon. It was very comical to zoom in 10x on the live view/lcd, while at 400mm, and watch the ducks sliding around on the ice. Their bright red or orange feet were slipping all over.

Waves and waves of snow geese returning from the north, sometime around noon. It's interesting they return at noon today and not at all the day before.

Ok, so maybe it gets a little graphic before the last image. It got really amazing right now. The one eagle lands here on the ice right in front of me. It wasn't long till other eagles discovered he had a duck with him. At first it was just one adult bald eagle that landed next to this one. He was interesting, since he wanted some, but didn't want to take it from the younger one. Instead he slowly crept closer. That was funny, as at times he looked like he was about to do the splits. That and the wind was blowing him north as he stood on the ice.

Now it's as if the eagle is trying to hide his food under his tail/rear. Nothing to see here fellas, move along.

This is why it was getting really amazing. This duel of eagles was happening right in front of me on the ice. You could hear the eagle calls over and over, which are rather unique and distinct. I had my camera on the tripod(doing everything I could to assure sharp images) using live view zoomed in 10x to focus just right on those eagles, then all the sudden there are more eagles flying over and stirring up this group of ducks. I kept waiting for the eagles near me to do something, so I didn't want to take the camera off the tripod and shoot the other scene. But finally I had to snatch it up and shoot it. Then of course the group of eagles in front of me take off.

What two of them do is play follow the leader, round and round this group of trees right by me. Over and over they'd fly practically right over my head. This one above really isn't even cropped in, just a hair. You can see the duck he's carrying, and how, in his talons. Rather sick I know. I was amazed just how long that other one would try and steal it away. I kept thinking, dude, you're going to use up more energy than you'll get. That and why not just go get a duck for yourself! I wonder how often they will just go grab a healthy duck compared to how long they'll look for an injured or dead one. Anyway, one last page, with not as graphic images... on Page 3 here. Massive amounts of snow geese on that page.

Like an oreo cookie. Ok, maybe not so much.

Scenes like this happened many times these 3 days. While making this account, I had to try and not use so many similar images for each day. So I am using this better example here on this page. While making a loop around the lake I got out to try and shoot an eagle flying over. As I did so I heard this go up behind me. It's a pretty awesome noise when they all go up.

If I had a dollar for every goose in this picture I could pay down a good chunk of my credit card. That is actually really sad.

That red square(or aprox) is shown in the next image at full size. Man I sure want to know how many are in something like that. But..........

Reminds me of the grocery store before a winter storm. Excuse me!

Meanwhile there are these two. These two encouraged a fair bit of wondering. They were right by the boardwalk, first standing on the ice together, completely by themselves, away from any groups. An eagle comes over, they hop in the water. Eagle continues on, they hook a right and come back to the ice and hang out together again. And just look at the water! That was all ice in the morning.

This was taken about the same time as the two ducks. I'd been talking to a couple shooters, from Illinois I think. The one had a Canon 1Ds and a 600mm attached to it. They sounded like they were going to come back in the morning and try for better light, as all these guys took off to eat right now. I told them about the crazy cold front(it was 60 here today around sunset.....24 hours later it would be about 10 here). I said it was supposed to be here around noon(according to the model!). Ooops. I look the next morning and it's plowing through there at day break. My bad. Models love to screw up arctic front speeds. Anyway, it was now 4 pm once again, and I was now really tired. All the snow geese gone, I figured may as well head home. I stop at the gas station near there and get some food and a pop. I come out and see a big plume of smoke back to the west, not terribly far away. I thought, hmmmm...that could be interesting with the sunset. So, I turned the GPS on and set out to find it. The whole way there I could see it dying fast. I was now west of the refuge, near the fields I saw geese in last year during the ice storm. I opted to look for that field since I was already back over there. I then find some by Big Lake. They were to my east, but I wanted them with the sun. I about drive over to that group, but then glance back to the southwest and see a massive flock low over the fields about 2 miles away. Sun was rapidly nearing the horizon though. To shoot from there or to try and get closer and maybe not get anything. Snapped a couple fast and took off. Raced around on this small one lane gravel/dirt deal which arced southwest, right into the sun. Literally could not see but a couple car lengths ahead of me thanks to the blinding sun.

I race the couple miles to them, get out and quickly snap away as they lift up again.

This is really fun, staring at the sun through a telephoto lens. Pretty soon I couldn't see the readings in my view finder. I'd have to quickly move my left eye over to it to see them. When I was done it was funny. If I closed my left eye, everything I looked at was pink. Close the right and I was fine. And hell, when I was shooting this, I was looking at an angle, trying not to look right at the sun. It was just really bright. Worth it I suppose though.

Guess one will have to keep an eye out for them on their way back. They are long gone now. Single digit highs tend to send them on their way. Here is a funny table from the Squaw Creek NWR web site showing the bird counts. http://www.fws.gov/midwest/SquawCreek/Waterfowl_Surveys.html See the 250,205 snow geese count from the 8th followed by the count on the 18th which shows 1.......ONE. Ok, yeah so they all left. I'm just wondering, what the hell is wrong with the one that stuck around, lol. Always one crazy one of the bunch, and evidently that's the one. The wind chill the day after my last day there was down around -30F. Probably would have been an interesting time lapse to watch that lake freeze over, if it got it done during the day like it thawed during the one day. Anyway, that count was just funny to me. Surely there is some story behind the one snow goose. Like maybe they keep it in the refuge building or something. Or perhaps it's just the counter/s. So cold and all, maybe they went out for the count and was like, hey there's one....ok, too cold now..lets go back. If they really did just go out and see some one crazy snow goose, I almost want to drive down to see that thing. Maybe it's like an abominable snow goose or something.