For all my whining about gray skies, you’d think I’d have a bunch of beautiful blue-sky pictures on a clear and crisp day like today. I sure would like to, but the critters had made other plans, it seems.
On my way north, I turned on my camera only once, but I flubbed the two chances a hairy woodpecker gave me before it disappeared in a tangle of little branches high up in the tree. Dang.
I spotted a gray squirrel with a mouth full of fallen leaves, for the second time in as many days, as it made its way up a tree trunk, and I lined up to capture an image when it came into the clear, but it found its burrow on the other side of that trunk before the clearing and emerged empty-mouthed. Darn!
At the north end, Lisa was kind enough to point out the bufflehead and hooded merganser pair, but I thought I might have been overexposing them lately, so I let them be. Neither of us could see any herons or raptors. Oh well.
On my way back south, it wasn’t until I reached the mudflats again, where the river is wide and slow, that I finally managed to capture a presentable image of a red-bellied woodpecker checking out a hole in an old tree trunk.
Just a bit south of there, at the base of stairway 9, I was thrilled to find a muskrat enjoying some late season greens at the water’s edge. Eat ’em while they last!
Finally, near the southern end, a group of mallards on the far shore were having some sort of agitated meeting, but they wouldn’t tell me what it was about.
That’s it for today, I’m afraid. Better luck next time, eh?
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 