A just-in-time arrival!

The grey skies and mild temperatures continued this morning, and we even had some fog for icing on the cake, but I had my rounds to make, so off to the park I went.

I didn’t see much more than mallards along the river until I reached the falls, where the slow and wide water just above them was full of Canada geese. Here’s a quartet standing on the ice just below the southern island.

There were easily 4 dozen birds out there, and I figured I should give them a scan to see if anyone was hiding among them. Sure enough, look who finally decided to grace us with his magnificent presence: a bufflehead drake, at long last! Ha!

I have no way to know if the hen with him is the same one we’ve been seeing for weeks, but we can certainly hope she is, and that her patience has been finally rewarded, right?

I didn’t see anything else remarkable at the north-end, and on my way south, I opted to hug the river again just because, and here’s my reward. Beside the mild rapids after the river turns to flow south again, our favorite blue heron was back to fishing.

I even watched it catch a fish, when I was still on its north side and shooting through a gap in some sticks. It had to jump into the water to get it, unfortunately, and ended up no longer lined up with that gap, so my autofocus couldn’t deal, and all the pictures of that exciting scene are blurry. Darn.

Instead, here’s a tranquil look upstream as it resumed fishing from the edge of the iceshelf.

Finally, for a little color to brighten the mood, here’s another look at the nuthatch from Wednesday.

I can’t wait to see who arrives tomorrow.