A big bird morning…

Wow! It was a gorgeous morning out there in Estabrook, and all three recent big birds were on the pond.

This makes 5 straight days for the cormorant, and he or she is really starting to look comfortable there, facing the audience to dry out in yesterday’s midday sun and pausing to scratch behind an ear this morning.

The young black-crowned night-heron was back and decided to take a little nap while I was trying to take its picture.

Lastly, biggest and most skittish of the three, was the youngish-looking great blue heron.

I continued on and arrived at the boat launch on the river a bit before 8, and everyone was still sleeping, but by the time I left, just after 8, the indigo buntings and the cicadas had both finally woken up and started singing. There were a few mallard hens on the water, but they were far enough out that I decided to save my film. On my way south along the river, I came across another pretty obedient plant starting to bloom that definitely does look film worthy, right?

At the mud flats, I spotted a couple of wood ducks looking to be just waking up, but they did not want to stick around for me to try to find a shot with better lighting, and just took care of that themselves.

I swung back by the pond, in hopes of finding a flower-of-the-hour blooming more than yesterday morning, but had no luck again, and this shot from yesterday afternoon isn’t much better. I guess I gotta be quicker or luckier to catch one of these beauties open, eh?