Lamar Snow Goose Festival successful despite weather

I have been too busy to post due to getting some newspaper ads out for the Snow Goose Festival and then traveling to, participating in and attending events at the Snow Goose Festival. The weather presented a challenge--many had heard about the awful snows and unusually cold weather with a continuing snow cover in the area, and some of them were deterred from attending. Then for the past week the TV stations around Colorado have been forecasting potential blizzard conditions in SE Colorado.

Though there were blizzard conditions Saturday in some sections of eastern Colorado, the Lamar area was sheltered from much of it--there were awful high winds (though we still birded and had some great finds as I will put in a separate post) but only scattered and very light snow showers with no accumulation. But all the warnings kept a lot of folks from traveling to Lamar for the festival.

However we had a very successful Snow Goose Festival considering he above, with over 100 participants (not counting the many volunteers giving programs, leading trips and helping at the Festival) including more than 25 from the Denver metro area (around 200 miles away). Almost all the scheduled events in Lamar were held including 2 field trips Saturday and a sunrise tour this am. And the keynote speaker, Pete Dunne, was not only a fantastic speaker but a great birder.

SeEtta