Still more to see…

I took a break from Estabrook yesterday and joined Donna’s Sunday morning birders at Doctor’s Park in Fox Point instead. It was a very nice day, the group is super friendly, and the park is nice enough, but I struggled to get any pictures. The most interesting sight, for me, was a group of red-headed woodpeckers, a bird that I have only ever seen once in Estabrook Park. Unfortunately, they stayed up high in a tree, and this picture is the best of the bunch.

I returned to Estabrook this morning, and the wood ducks on the pond were kind enough to welcome me back with this tender scene.

The young/female hooded merganser is still there, but is all by its lonesome, so this is the tenderest scene it could create.

On the river, at the north end, I found a green heron in a pose I don’t believe I’ve seen before. I’ve seen them squinched up like that but holding their body more vertical, or horizontal like that but more stretched out because they are hunting at the time.

As I counted the sandpipers, to see if there was anyone new, this one flew in to forage pretty close to me, and the face looks a little like the yellowlegs we’ve seen recently, but the legs are not yellow nor especially long. Instead, it’s a solitary sandpiper, the likes of which we haven’t seen since May. “Welcome back, Sweetie!”

As I looked north in search of barn swallows under the bridge, or just hunting over the water, this grackle was uncharacteristically undisturbed by me. They seldom offer me a chance to take such a nice portrait.

Better yet, once I turned my attention its way, it just continued foraging and eventually found this tasty-looking crayfish claw. I would have never guessed those little crustaceans were such an important link in the local food chain.

On my way back south, I was just in time to catch this ginormous snapping turtle portage over a shallow spot in the river just off the northern tip of the southern island.

Finally, as I approached the south end on the river trail, I had the good fortune to come across this beauty. It’s a polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus), one of the “giant silk moths“, and the first one I’ve ever seen in Estabrook. It had recently expired, I am sad to say, but it was stil in good shape, and I was able to lift it from the middle of the trail and set it gently on this log to take a final portrait.