Freezeout Lake Montana

On Friday afternoon as soon as John had finished work we loaded up the van, and the kids, and a LOT of snacks, and made our way to Choteau, Montana.    Now this may not sound like much of a destination to you, but there is a cool little thing about the Choteau areat that we learned about from John's sister Sarah and her family.   Every year at this time, thousands of birds, particularly snow geese and tundra swans, migrate through the area and spend a couple of weeks grazing in the nearby fields and resting on Freezeout Lake.    (Just google Freezeout Lake Montana and see for yourself)    Anyways- we had planned to go last year and meet up with Sarah and Ed but ended up backing out, though I made John promise me that we'd check it out this year.

Hence our trip this weekend to "the middle of nowhere Montana."      AKA...Choteau.

This is a picture of the hotel lobby of the Stage Stop Inn where we stayed.   I know this doesn't look too exciting to you, but my kids apparently thought this was pretty darn cool.   Really.  You would have thought we'd arrived in Disneyland the way they kept going on about it.  

Suffice it to say that a lot of time was spent at the hotel swimming with the kids, eating junk food, relaxing, watching America's Funniest Home Videos while eating popcorn (not junk food), and visiting with John's sister Sarah who met up with us.   I think it is safe to say that if we never had gone out to look for birds,  my kids would have been perfectly happy with all of the above.

 Oh yeah, and Nate spent the night puking.  

I was not happy with that.

Alright- now for the amazing part.   The birds!

So there is this lake (as I mentioned earlier) called Freezeout lake.    And true to it's name, it was pretty much frozen over and sat fairly empty for a large part of the day.  

But this lake won't stay empty for long,  because the 70-100,000 geese who are passing through the area are currently out feeding on leftover grain from farmer's fields.   

Like clockwork, right around 11:00 am, you begin to hear the faint sound of geese in the distance, and soon a dark cloud of birds begin to make their way to the lake.

It's a pretty impressive sight to see as they get closer.    This photo shows just one group of snow geese.    From every direction, groups of similar size begin to make their way back to the lake.

It's a bit of a frenzy as they all try to find somewhere to land, and the noise is unbelievable!    Even from as far away as we were, it was still an incredible sound.

The weekend we were there, the bird count also indicated that there were about 4000 tundra swans at the lake.

Every couple of minutes another flock comes in to land.    Sarah made the comment that the lake was more like an airport, the way some birds came and others left.

Sure enough, some smaller groups would take off, and I suspect they were beginning the next leg of their journey.     (I've heard that the next stop is in northern Alberta)

Aside from the 70,000 snow geese and 4000 Tundra swans, we also saw a cool flock of pelicans.

And we saw a LOT of other birders out.    Some people camped in this cold weather right by the lake.   I suppose they are what you would call "enthusiasts."         ....I wish I could be like them.

The landscape was dotted with these mounds of dirt, which we suspect are nests for the Canadian geese in the area.     

The snow geese were beautiful to watch when the lighting was right.    

This particular flock was HUGE!    The trail of birds flying in seemed relentless and I would never have been able to really capture the size of it.   Which is a pity.   But really- this isn't the type of thing that really can be captured on camera.    There is too much to take in.   Too much to hear!

One of my favorite moments came on Friday night.  We had just arrived and were excited to see our first "Fly In" but the weather was really poor which had thrown off the bird's normal routine.    It was freezing cold, and snowing and very very foggy.    Finally after what seemed like an hour, and just as the sun was going down the birds began to come in for the night.    It was such a serene moment, and as John, Sarah and I stood watching these birds lift off and soar right above us toward the lake, you could literally HEAR their wings beating the air!   

I put my camera down and didn't even try to take a photo.   I guess I just felt like that was a moment I wanted to experience completely.     That moment made the trip down totally worth it.  

  Every thing after that was just icing on the cake!

Speaking of icing on the cake:  This afternoon when we got back- John had me go wash the van and I couldn't help but notice that there was not a single bit of bird poop on our van.   Not a speck!    

Now how lucky is that? 

John was so awesome to video tape a couple of the fly ins and he has added some of my photos to make a bit of a slide show.   Feel free to check it out - you'll feel like you were there yourself!