I helped out with the Eagan Christmas Bird Count today. Most of the trails were fairly well groomed, but the temps in the Twin Cities started out at -5. But it was at least 20 degrees by the end of the day.

Actually, Linda the woman in the above photo had us hiking pretty hard and fast on some snowy hills. All the hiking had us sweating under our multiple layers of pants. And if you're looking at the above photo thinking that it doesn't look so bad, check out where we had just come from:

Yes, that is where we had just come from. Hoo-wee. Linda wore me out but kept me warm.

Since the goal was to try and count birds, I didn't have a chance to do huge amounts of digiscoping but I did get an okay shot of a tree sparrow.

We wrapped up at about 4pm and since it was evening, I thought I would drive by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport to see if a snowy owl had shown up yet. I passed by the glycol plant and there on one of the light posts was a snowy owl.

I got out of the car and tried to digiscope a photo of the snowy, but the light wasn't the best, but good enough for the blog. And it's usually best not to lallygag around the glycol plant at an airport with a spotting scope taking photos.

It's a one way road out of the plant so I drove slowly past the lamp and stuck my camera out the window to get one last photo. I love living in Minneapolis where a snowy owl is less than eight miles from home.