Getting Excited

I love that my kids get excited when they see a cool bird. It's a hobby that my husband has loved since he was a child. Bird watching kind of got pushed to the back burner for him for many years, but when he started pursuing this hobby again he quickly got me and the kids excited about it. There are days when we can't convince them to get out of bed to go look at birds, but most of the time they at least show interest. Today was a little different. I was driving them home from school when Hollee said, "Mommy, look at that bird!" I pulled over and pulled out the binoculars and we had a good look. Luckily we had the camera with us too so I was able to get a few shots of it. They weren't very good given the height he was sitting at, but we have them. We had NO clue what he could be so we drove two more blocks to home and grabbed the bird book. We turned around to go get a second look and got there just in time to see him in flight which is also good for identifying a bird. We looked through the book and I kept going back to the same bird, but was sure that nothing that exotic was here in Utah. We came home, did a little bit of research and yep, I was right, it's a Double-Crested Cormorant. The best part of all this? As I'm sitting here typing, Hollee is in her room reading up on the bird. And the others are chatting about it, holding the yard stick to see how big he was and generally just being excited. It's nice to get the kids interested in something besides all the usual stuff. It's even nicer when we get to do those things as a family, I just wish that Timm could have seen the bird. We'll go out tonight and check the area and hopefully have another sighting.