Snow Goose Festival 2011

Copyright © 2011 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

I, and 3 girl-friends, and Alex went to Central California for the annual Snow Goose Festival.

The weather forecast called for gray skies, with low clouds, and rain in the forecast for Sunday.

It made for some rather dull backgrounds, but I saw several birds I’d never seen before.

The water birds were out in the ponds quite a distance from me. I had rented a Nikkor 300mm f4 for the week-end hoping to get some nice shots. I used my Tamron 1.4x extender for an hour, but wasn’t happy with what I was seeing in my LCD in playback so I just took it off. I did use my latest accessory the Wimberley Sidekick. I really like it. Moving my camera was so smooth, and panning was much easier. I wish I had thought to take a photo of it. I’ll do that this week.

We were all struggling with the distance, and getting the sharp, close up.

Our first tour Saturday morning was at Llanco Seco Wildlife Refuge where we saw several different types of ducks. I saw American Wigeon, Eurasian Wigeon, a Ruddy Duck, Coots, lots of Coots, a Sandhill Crane fly-by, Tundra Swan fly-by, and a Meadowlark.

After we finished our tour at Llano Seco we met a friend of R’s who is a local resident in Chico. She knew the back roads. She took us to a little known refuge where we saw a Night Heron tree. The trees had so many in them. I tried to get a good shot of one in flight, but they were too far away so it didn’t come out as well as I had hoped. From there we went out to another pond where we saw lots and lots of Snow Geese. We saw flocks of them coming in and landing in the pond which upset the Tundra Swan and sent some of them off.

Here is one of a little group of 3 that took off. They were pretty far away from me. I think I’d need an 800mm lens to get a close up! Still I’m happy to have got this shot, and to have seen them take off and hear them.

We had a great time with B. Thank you B for the gift of your time, and sharing your spots with us.

Sunday I woke up to rain, rain, rain… My 3 girl-friends weren’t able to get on the tour Alex and I signed up for so they were gone, and Alex who coming down with a cold wasn’t feeling it when he woke up to rain. I went out to the meeting spot for the Paskenta Tour but it was still rainy. I wasn’t feeling it so I headed for home. It rained the whole 3.5 hour drive home. On the bright side I beat the returning ski traffic.

Even though I didn’t get the  money shot I hoped for this week-end  it was a stellar birding week-end. Seeing the flocks of geese come in to land, the Sandhill Crane, and Swan fly-bys, and so many different ducks was thrilling. Hanging out with my friends was a joy.  I am looking forward to next year’s Snow Goose Festival.

Nikon D300s| Nikkor 300mm f4| f5| 1/3200 sec| ISO 800| Manual Mode| On a Tripod|