snow geese

Every spring snow geese pass through this area on their migration north. There is a nature preserve near here where 60,000 to 100,000 snow geese stop for a couple weeks every year. (Canada geese and tundra swans also migrate through the same area as well as multiple types of duck.) You can see them flying around every time you leave the house and there are always big flocks of them in farm fields. We went to see them on Friday. 

Walking to the lake.

Flying geese - kind of hard to see in the picture.

If you make these pictures larger you can kind of see the geese. There were about sixty thousand of them the day we went, but the lake was so icy that they were all out by some islands where the water had thawed. There are normally more of them closer to shore and even walking around the pavilion by the lake. 

Posing by a tree.

The rest of the pictures are all from inside the nature center. 

Piper's favorite birds.

Cute kids.

Piper seeing how big her wingspan is.

Watching construction work outside.

A display about how they count all the geese.

Rory doing a scavenger hunt.