My apartment in Delft has huge, old-timey windows in one end, and even though they are in pretty good shape, my apartment is a lot warmer if I keep the heavy curtains closed. Thus, I don’t really know what the weather is like outside until I explicitly look, and this morning I was pleasantly surprised to find that the forecast “partly cloudy” had drifted into “mostly sunny” if only for a little while. So I grabbed my camera and hustled out the door to see who I could see.
The cormorants were in their usual spot and this time, one was willing to give us a good look at those magnificent wings. That’s a coot with its head turned in the foreground.
The nesting grebes were still busy at work on their nest. One stayed on it, and the other was busy scrounging up sticks to drag over and add to the pile.
Someone must have gotten too close to the heron, and it retreated to a second-story gutter to let traffic clear out.
And this time I spotted a pair of swans on my first pass. They were flying south at about 20 feet over the river, and I managed to get my camera onto one of them just after they had gone by me.
On my way back south, I found the heron back at the water’s edge, and something in the water must have just caught its eye.
An Egyptian goose was on the lawn behind the heron, and this one was sporting some serious jewelry.
Finally, back at the south end, none of the cormorants had their wings out anymore, but this one was making quite a fist with its foot.
There were also a bunch of black-headed gulls, a few mallards, a few moorhens, and a lone herring gull along the river, and a small flock of graylag geese flew high overhead, which brings the aquatic species count all the way to 11 this time.
The forecast for tomorrow morning is for “light rain”, so my chances of having another photoshoot are pretty slim, and I’ve saved some non-water bird pictures to show you then.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 