A Satisfactory South Holland Saturday

Well, I’ve been here for over a month, and I now have a local bank account into which I got paid and from which I paid my rent for July, so it looks like they’re going to let me stay a while. That’s cool ’cause now that I’ve had a taste, I’d like to see how this whole experiment turns out.

We had a beautiful morning here today, and my first stop was at the stork nest, where the chicks look healthy and appear even to be showing a little sibling rivalry.

There were new butterflies out today, and here’s a beautifully earth-toned, female “meadow brown” (Maniola jurtina) feeding on a thistle blossom on the berm between the bike path and the canal.

I also spotted another new bird for us, this shy Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes), who look just like the wrens we see in Estabrook Park. I am stunned to read that it is “the only member of the wren family Troglodytidae found in Eurasia and Africa (Maghreb).” Heck, we have at least three different species in Estabrook: the house, the winter, and the marsh.

The goldfinches were out again, and this handsome devil struck a pose on the edge of an honest-to-goodness thatched roof.

I finally found a male blackbird willing to sit for a portrait to go with the image of a female I showed you from my first day here.

And I finally found a common moorhen with her chick.

There’s more, but I’m gonna try to spread them out over a few days. Wish me luck and watch this space.