Dan's day.

Dan was headed out to Frank lake and was looking for some company so I tagged along. He picked me up at 8:30 and we weree off, unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse and we had very poor light conditions; heavy overcast with heavy snow at times. Things were quite until we arrived at the lake area for parking, Dan spotted our first Bald Eagle (6, I think for the day). We found about 150 Horned larks:

I've always had a tough time getting shots of these birds, as they tend to keep their distance, and they are pretty small. You can see the snow falling in this shot.
The lake, although only partially open was full of birds.  Here is a group of Male Pintails escorting a female:

We found probably 5000 Pintails in a single field a little later in the day, along with about 3-500 swans, there were a mixture of Trumpeter and Tundra:

We finished up the day (about 8 hours) with this herd of 80-100 elk:

While the weather was tough, and we didn't find some of the birds Dan was looking for, we did pretty well: 1-3000 geese, 1-3000 mallards, 4-8000 Pintails, 5-800 swans, 6 Redtailed hawks, 8 Roughies, 6 Bald Eagles, 100-150 Horned Larks, 20-40 deer, 80-100 elk. On a day with very poor light conditions, between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.  I would consider that a successful day!!
Turbo