Myself and one of our graduate students did a little birding while we were working on some water sampling in Cheyenne Bottoms. Pretty active day with a significant increase in open water this afternoon. In Pool 1 we saw 10 adult bald eagles and 2 juveniles, 50 or so ring-billed gulls with what appeared to be 2 herring gulls amidst them. Saw 75 or so geese, mostly cackling, 20 pintails, and 100’s of mallards, gadwall and widgeons in Pool 4B. A large number of harriers, which peaked abundance around handicap blind in pool 1B with 19 birds soaring around. Perhaps our two most exciting finds were 6 hooded mergansers in Pool 1C and a snowy owl around blind 26 in Pool 2. The owl was too far out to see definitive markings to give a stab at the sex of the bird. We also saw 8 great blue herons and an immature Harlan’s red tail along the outlet canal.