National Bird Day 2016

It's hard to celebrate when you're sick.  I've had a cold for a few days and it's been off and on awful.
For Christmas, I got some birding gear.  I got binoculars and a "Birds of Utah" Field Guide.

Since January 5 is National Bird Day, we planned in advance to go out birdwatching that day to try out my new gear.  I really wanted to go.  Jeremy really wanted to go.  But I've been feeling awful and the last few days have been so cold.  But we really wanted to go.  And we really hoped we could go.
Today, January 5, I woke up not feeling as awful as when I woke up yesterday.  It was not as cold as yesterday, either.  In fact it was warm enough that snow and ice were melting all over the place.
Jeremy made me a walking stick out of PVC to help me since I haven't been doing so much walking the last few days.  On the top of the walking stick we put a PVC camera mount that my brother, Paco, made to put the camcorder on so we could get a steadier shot when it was zoomed in.  

And we used it.  Yes, we did.  We zoomed in and got pictures of this:

Great Horned Owl

Highlight of National Bird Day, I'll tell you.  We did not expect to see an owl while we were out, but we did.  We also saw some robins, some northern flickers, a lot of seagulls, and some smaller birds we still need to identify (maybe some chickadees, goldfinches, etc.)... and a lot of airplanes which Lucky pointed out every single time.

I also was feeling pretty good while we were out.  I mentioned to Jeremy that yesterday I felt like I had a bad cold but today I felt like I had a regular cold.  Then Lucky needed me to hold him for a while, which was great, until I started feeling it.  Oh dear (we also saw a few deer).  Thankfully Jeremy carried him the rest of the way so I could walk along with my walking stick.  I think Lucky's hands were cold because he kept picking up snow on the side of the path.  That and I think the temperature dropped a bit while we were out.
Overall, the weather wasn't too bad and I was able to get around pretty well... and that great horned owl was totally worth it.
We'll see how I feel tomorrow.

P.S.  Also to celebrate, I put up a video I took a few months back of a caspian tern diving into a pond to catch a fish.  Check it out on my YouTube channel.