Kohler-Andae day 2-ish, double the fun

I learned a few lessons from day 1-ish, and this morning went smooth as glass. I put my camera in the car and parked in a nearby overflow lot last evening so when I got up at 4 this morning, all I had to do was walk quietly to the car, drive to Kwik Trip for a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich, then drive back to the beach to enjoy it while waiting for the lights to come on.

My first treat was this trio of deer making their daily migration across the dunes from the beach to the woods to bed down for the day.

Soon after that, I was floored to watch a small raptor swoop into a nearby tree. Even better, it let me crawl on my hands and knees close enough to get this portrait. At first I thought it was a peregrine falcon, but the face wasn’t quite right, and that’s because it’s a merlin instead. Ha!

I eventually continued on and came across this young buck just starting to grow some antlers. I definitely didn’t see it on day 1-ish, so that makes 12 distinct deer in total.

And then I finally got to see the infamous sandhill cranes that have been making such a racket every morning.

At the far north end of the park, I came across the buck from last time, whom I now see has a big head-start in the antler division.

On my way back south, I kept checking the pine trees in hopes of spotting some of the red crossbills everyone’s been talking about, and suddenly I thought I had my chance. Instead, it turns out to be an early warbler migrant, also heading south, and my best guess, from the grey head and yellow chest, is that it’s a young or female Nashville warbler, but I’m not sure yet. I’ll keep you posted.

Then I headed inland to check for more viceroys, and the first butterfly I met was this stunner, a common buckeye, instead. I’ve only ever seen them a couple of times before, so I didn’t recognize it right away, but Dr. Google remembered.

At the Black River, I could hear a little commotion, and the cause turned out to be this Cooper’s hawk perched just above the water. That’s two raptor portraits in one day. Woo Hoo!

Ol’ Coop didn’t stick around long, and when it left, look who I found perched just a bit farther out on the same dead branch. It looks like a young green heron, and perhaps the hawk was trying to convince it to “get in my belly!“

As if that wasn’t enough, there was a second heron lurking in the background, this young black-crowned night-heron. You can even see it in the blurry background along the left side of the image above. Yikes! It was crowded in there. No wonder there was a commotion.

Finally, it was time to call it a morning and head back to camp, and that’s when I saw the viceroy, well actually a pair of them. Ta Da! They sure appear to love that Joe Pye weed.

Lastly, along the park road that parallels the reed marsh, this darling pair of newly fledge eastern kingbirds were just enjoying the beautiful morning sun and crying for their breakfasts, and I was getting hungry for my second breakfast, too. Yum!