Sadly pictures can’t tell the whole story of the day we had today at John Martin State Park. We’d visited two years ago to see the snow geese but we saw so much more today!

We will share some pictures, but they can’t show the bone chilling cold (a low of 1 degree Fahrenheit) or the amazing sound of the ice cracking below the dam as we enjoyed the sights of varied bird life through our scope and binoculars (so happy with that purchase!).

Sadly we didn’t get pictures of an owl we scared out of a tree as it flew low across the cover, or of the bobcat we saw slinking across the ice on Lake Hasty, the coyotes we saw in fields and on the side of the road, the deer watching us as we drove by, or the tons of hawks we saw everywhere we went, not to mention the murmurations of birds as we drove east in the early morning. Sadly, we were too early to see the snow geese who winter in the area in the thousands.

But here are a few choice shots.