Olio…

The weather has been nice enough, if a little cool, in Estabrook Park lately, but I’ve struggled to capture pictures of pretty or interesting things, and after two days, here’s what I’ve managed to scrape together.

The four goslings on the pond continue to thrive, and here’s one looking our way for a second between bites of that tasty, tasty lawn grass.

Here are the four of them following mom for a swim.

And here are five mallard drakes who almost lined up perfectly.

In my hike along the river, I spotted five wood ducks up in a tree. There are four of them in the image below, and one more is off to the right a bit. We’ve seen two or three before like this, but this is the first time I’ve seen five.

Out on the water at the north end, there was another pair of blue-winged teals paying us a visit, and here’s the dapper drake with a mallard drake in the background to provide a sense of scale.

Meanwhile, back on land, lots of birds are collecting nest-building materials. Here’s a crow with a beak full of white fluffy stuff…

Here’s a grackle with a few wisps of grass, …

And here’s a robin with quite the haul of straw.

Here’s another robin adding some dark and scraggly-looking clump to its nest.

Back to eating habits, here’s a black-capped chickadee chowing down on fresh tamarack tree needles. “Mm! Mm! Good!”.

Finally, here’s a red squirrel pausing for a moment in the nice, warm sun this morning.