Back to Estabrook for a great morning.

Morocco sure was amazing, but I’m always glad to get back home, and temps in the mid 70s sure are easier to take than temps in the mid 100s. Besides the mild temps, the sky was clear, and the breeze was light, so it was a perfect morning to get back into Estabrook Park. Better yet, my good lens was waiting for me when I got home yesterday afternoon, and it appears to be working as good as new. Yay!

There were a dozen mallards on the pond, but none looked like a duckling, so let’s hope its mom hiked the one we had been seeing down to the river, or I just didn’t see it this morning. I did see one wood duck duckling and three hens, and I’m guessing the hen that duckling followed up onto a log is its mom.

At the river, I heard the now-somewhat-familiar sound of a red-headed woodpecker, and I eventually found it high over the southern island. I still have my fingers crossed that a pair will expand their range into Estabrook so that we can see them more regularly.

While I was hunting for the woodpecker, this grey squirrel on our side of the river, who was probably a youngster based on its behavior, seemed fascinated by me, and kept creeping closer for a better look. It got so close that I had to zoom out to get this picture.

Over the meadow at the north end, a Cooper’s hawk was soaring amongst the swallows and swifts as though it thought it might catch one, but I didn’t see it have any luck, and it eventually drifted east.

Meanwhile, at the north end of the meadow, this male indigo bunting was alternately singing and picking seeds out of the seedhead it is holding in its right claw.

After a few sightings earlier in the spring, the northern rough-winged swallows seemed to disappear for a while, but they were back big-time today. Perhaps all the nestlings are now fledglings.

Back at the south end, the big patch of weeds along the west side of the soccer fields is now full of blossoming thistle, which is attracting plenty of bugs, but here’s a female twelve-spotted skimmer, perched on a burdock burr from last summer, who might be just there for the warm sun.

The birch tree that stands in the middle of the patch regularly attracts house wrens, indigo buntings, and song sparrows. This is one of the latter.

And like the bunting above, my presence did not interrupt its singing.

Finally, the bugs on the flowers included this red admiral, …

this painted lady, …

and this bicolored striped sweat bee, the “official bee” of Toronto.