May 22, 2016: We love the Sand Creek Wildlife Management area, an Idaho Birding Trail. This area, roughly 31,000 acres near St. Anthony is in the Chester Wetlands area. The ponds at Sand creek attract a wide variety of waterfowl and shorebirds and the occasional Bald Eagle are drawn to the ponds in search of fish. Dottie Toone joined Daniel and I on this fine spring morning. The pictures tell the tale. We arrived to find the area around the ponds closed for nesting season but found a spot just past Pond 3. As we were setting up our easels we admired the cloud formations. Did you ever notice that clouds can show perspective, starting big and wide in the foreground and becoming narrower and narrower in the distance? We got set up and Kara snapped some reference photos only to notice that the clouds had turned ominous. We realized we were in for a storm. By the time we got in the vehicles we were in the middle of a full on rainstorm. On the 18 mile drive out, Daniel and I noticed blue skies over the sand dunes and decided to make it a road trip outing. Before long the storm had moved on and we were able to drive around the dune area between the main dunes and the Chester Wetlands. I captured It turned out to be a great day to capture cloud reference photos. You never know what the day will bring. - Kara
