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.