June starts off with a bang!

I received a comment about yesterday’s post from long-time reader, fellow crack-of-dawn trail walker, and sometimes blogger, Carrie, who mentioned that she had seen both a doe with her fawn and a wood duck hen with her ducklings on the pond yesterday. Sheesh! Where the heck had I been?

Anyway, as I was stepping out of the shower last evening, Anne shouted from the dining room, “there goes the doe and fawn!” So, I dropped my towel, grabbed my camera, and bolted out the door. Just kidding. I stopped to put on pants and a shirt, for better camouflage of course, before I bolted out of the door.

Our neighbor, Sheila saw me on the sidewalk with my camera, thought I might be looking for the fox, but then saw the deer in her neighbor’s back yard, and waved me over. Here they are, at long last, those two adorable shrubbery eaters.

But wait, there’s more! As I skirted the southern soccer fields in Estabrook Park this morning, I came across two more deer. First, this handsome-looking young buck just starting to grow his rack for this year, …

and then this doe, seemingly in hot pursuit.

Then, I headed straight to the pond, of course, but before I could get there, this male flicker, who have all gone silent recently, was amazingly intent on getting every last bit of what it was finding there in the ground.

Aflter skirting around the flicker, I reached the pond at last and found a wood duck hen with her three ducklings, just as advertised. It won’t be long until those voracious little rapscalions will be eating tadpoles, frogs, crayfish, or anything else they can catch.

My next stop was the river, where I found the great blue heron fishing from the top of the falls for a change. There were also three more perched in the tree over the northern island.

The big surprise at the island for me, however, it that I finally managed to capture an image of a mink on land, and only my second mink picture ever. Woo Hoo! Of course, there are a couple of tiny leaves covering its face, and it didn’t reappear in the interminable fifteen minutes I sat on the riverbank waiting for it, but baby steps…

While I was waiting in vain for the mink to come back out to play, I did catch this spotted sandpiper foraging over a bit of water reflecting the trees over the far shore awash in golden sunlight.

Once I moved on, I found the mallard hen with her three ducklings again, but I like this picture, of the three being photobombed by a killdeer, the best. It sure can get busy out there!

On my way back south along the river, I spotted my first damselfly of the season, probably a female dancer of some kind. No, seriously. I suspect female because she’s not sporting flashy colors, and “dancer” is the common name for damselflies in the genus Argia.

Finally, the Virginia waterleaf or eastern waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum) are in full bloom throughout the park, and here’s one of the blue persuasion.