Leon Turnbull Photography

We arrived at Carlsbad in southern California pretty early in the afternoon. We checked into our hotel and told our excited kids we were going to Legoland the next day. Tara wanted to keep it a surprise from them as long as possible. So we drove all the way down south with them thinking we were going to see some waterfall. But you can’t keep things from Jadon too long. He is a heckuva little reading machine now. He spotted a sign on the road that said “Legoland” as we were pulling into Carlsbad. The surprise was over. He was as excited as fox in a henhouse. He had been begging us to go to Legoland for at least a year. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to go this year. But as things turned out, due to my job situation, we are no longer able to go to Canada this Christmas, so that opened up this chance to go to Legoland this month.

After check-in, we figured we could go to the beach and see the sunset. But I wasn’t really into seeing sunset on the beach this evening (crazy, I know). There didn’t seem to be many clouds in the sky (wrong), and I was more into bird watching this evening. So I dropped the wife and kids off at the beach, and I went to Batiquitos Lagoon to do some bird watching with my big lens. It was not too bad, I saw egrets, heron, and a hawk, plenty of ducks, and lots of little birds such as this one (which I believe, is a house finch). The problem with this particular lagoon is that the path does not follow the water edge very closely, so it was difficult to get any close-up shots of the bigger birds. But this little guy perched himself really close to where I was and I could get a nice shot of him and his pretty colors. There were also quite a lot of people walking on the path, which is something that should be expected, but I would have definitely preferred more solitude. Not one of them so much as said a single word (such as even a hello) to me. Is it because people are not as friendly in southern California? or is it because they just thought I was very weird walking around with a big camera and tripod? Probably the latter.