Wednesday I suddenly found myself with a few hours free in the afternoon. And we had sun with the rest of the week predicted to be cold and rainy. What should I do?

What would you do?

I decided I should head out in search of a few photogenic barns. I wasn’t sure where I’d be going, but just going in search of barns felt great. I told myself it didn’t matter if I found any. I had a full tank of gas and nowhere I had to be.

But after a couple of hours I wasn’t thrilled with what I’d found. I seemed to be in familiar territory and hadn’t seen anything new. Then I turned one more corner and found this one. It was perfect.

Maybe I wasn’t going to find any more great barns, but it was still early, going on 3:30. I knew I wasn’t far from Overlook Park in Midland, where another photographer had seen pelicans this winter. I’d been there twice before, searching for the pelicans, but hadn’t seen anything more interesting than geese and ducks.

But she’d told me, just recently, that it was always dusk when she saw the pelicans. Would it be worth it to hang out there until the sun went down? I decided to go see.

Overlook Park, located in Midland, Michigan, is basically a parking lot perched on a hill looking out over the retention ponds of DOW Chemical. I’ve seen eagles and hawks and geese and ducks and deer there. But never pelicans.

When I first arrived there was one other car parked there, somebody with binoculars scanning the ponds. I pulled in and immediately saw something big headed our way. It landed in a tree on the outer edges of the park, not so far from the parking lot. I thought maybe it was a juvenile eagle. But I was wrong.

It’s a hawk, I think, though I’m no expert on differentiating between hawks. As soon as I got out of the car he (or she) spotted me and I knew right away it was going to take flight. I wasn’t wrong about that!

I tried to keep it in the frame, but that was just about impossible.

It flew off to my right, into the woods where it could have some privacy. I sighed and returned to my search of the water, looking for pelicans.

I wondered if the pelicans were way over on the other side of the pond, with the hundreds of geese and ducks over there. If they were, there wasn’t a chance I’d ever see them. Even as I considered what else I could shoot, hundreds of geese lifted up, at once, in groups of a dozen or two and flew overhead.

The noise was amazing. I don’t know if they were headed to their night roosts, or just stirring up trouble because they could. After they moved on I hunkered down to wait some more. The sun was going down and it was getting colder.

I wondered if I’d be lucky. I had no idea from which direction the pelicans would come or where they’d land. So much of the water was far away from where I waited. I reminded myself this wasn’t Disney World, the pelicans weren’t on the clock. There were no guarantees they’d show up at all.

Meanwhile I was entertained by some adorable diving ducks. You’d see them swimming…

…and then suddenly they’d disappear, leaving only a ring of ripples to show they had ever been there.

Then they’d pop back up again somewhere else. It was so fun to watch.

Still…I was there for pelicans. Would they come in as the sun went down or arrive under the cover of darkness? Would it be at the other end of the pond? Had they migrated on to somewhere warmer? Were they even still in the state?

Would they show up at all? How long should I wait?

How long would you wait?