BoWax !!!!!

Bohemian waxwings were the birds we all wanted to see the most on this trip. Folks have been seeing them near the Dafter port office for weeks now and there was a report from the day we arrived that they were seen. We tried a few times on Saturday to find them and we thought we saw a flock of about 30 flying away at one point but couldn't be sure. So early Sunday morning we decided to try again. We pulled into the post office parking lot and there wasn't a bird to be seen. We circled the area; no birds. We decided to go see Carlos, our snowy owl, down in Rudyard again to give the birds some time to wake up and move around. Carlos was chillin next to some piles in a field and gave us great looks. A flock of snow buntings drifted by and landed in a tree at a nearby house as we were leaving. Cool to see them in trees.
We decided one more look at Dafter before we had to go. There was a major storm moving into the area that would slow us down if we waited too long to get on the road.
Back at at the post office again and still no waxwings but redpolls and starlings were up and at 'em. We cicled the area and returned to the post office again to find fifteen cars jammed in the lot with people pointing and looking happy. We saw the flock again as it flew away. Dammit !!
So we thought we would wait it out but I am super impatient when it comes to sitting in a parking lot so I thug we would drive around a little. Ladybird spotter a bird in a tree near the I75 bridge. It was a pine grosbeak. Just a pine grosbeak, but what were those birds below it in the other trees? BOWAX! Tons of them! We jumped out and threw scopes up to get awesome views of the birds 75 feet away. Then a small bunch would rise up from somewhere unseen and fly out, then more, then more THEN MORE! Tons of them were in the trees and flying around. We estimAted about 150 total in the flock. I snapped a bunch of digi shots but the lighting wasn't the greatest. It really didn't matter though. We had found our biggest target bird, and every other target for this trip as a matter of fact and a bird I didn't expect to see at all, the crossbills.
It was a great weekend of birding. I added nine new birds for the year and the rest added life bird after life bird. Fantastic!
The drive back was uneventful until we got just north of Ann Arbor and it started to snow. And snow. And snow some more until the roads were invisible and the near whiteout conditions forced us off the highway. We are in a Best Western waiting for the roads to clear up. About 8 inches of fresh snow is on the ground and layers of ice are farther south of us. It may still be an interesting drive home.....