I took my kid on one last field trip before autumn season. For the past several years, it's been a tradition to visit certain locations in Utah and the aviary is one of them. I tried to do a few things different this time around like my uncle suggested. One of the suggestions was making the photo album a bit more educational.
Unfortunately, that isn't always successful. This particular hornbill seemed very shy. Every time it saw people are looking it, it stopped playing and walked away. After several attempts, I decided to call it quits. That was the best shot I could get.
Of course, I had the bright idea of taking out two birds with one stone. I thought it would be clever to take a picture of the bird and its name in the same frame. Sometimes, it worked okay, but it can leave huge empty spaces in the photograph. At the same time, it gave better context of the enclosure the birds dwelled in.
There are other times, it created this "Where's Waldo?" scenario. In the picture above, there are black vultures and a whistling duck hiding somewhere. After further evaluation, it was easier to take separate pictures of the info and the birds. It's more stuff to sort out, but a much better approach. That is, unless I could come across situations where things were picture perfect.
It was at least better than I had expected. I mean, if I wanted to find interesting info about the birds, I could search for them online. What was more important was the name of the birds so I could look them up.
What's an aviary without a roaming peacock? Of course, the kid wanted to see him display its feathers. That didn't happen.
His mate wasn't too far away. She was grooming herself.
The highlight of the day was seeing this wrinkled hornbill on the loose. Well, it was on its daily "walks". It decided to come and chill with the macaws. I could hear the employees calling for it at a distance, but it chose to visit its bird buddies. There were no live shows scheduled for that afternoon. Otherwise, we would have stayed longer.
The nice part about taking my son to the aviary was that he is now more inquisitive. There are more interactions and questions about what he saw there. There were moments he was enjoying looking yonder and watched the ducks play with each other.
I chose to do this trip around this time of the year in part due to the weather. It was a nice 80°F (26.7 °C) in the early afternoon. For the most part this year, it was well over 100°F in the day. Since the school year had started, I had hoped there was less traffic at the location. Finally, I have no idea if there will be any more restrictions due to Covid later this year, I figured it made sense to go.
We will come again next year.