These photos are from a January 2004 visit to the refuge when populations of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes were very high. Most of the pictures were taken with a new Canon EF 300L F4 IS lens that I am just learning to use, many of these with the Canon 1.4x extender at 420 mm. I found learning to track flying birds very difficult and my failure rate (out of focus pictures) was very high. The 300 mm lens also does not really have adequate reach for birds under these circumstances, so many of the photos are significantly cropped. I saw many more experienced photographers with huge (and very expensive) 500 and 600 mm lenses.