More Estabrook and the last of Sedona

It was a curious morning in Estabrook Park. The sky above was nice and clear, but there was a huge cumulonimbus cloud to the southeast that blocked the sun quite effectively. It was cool, at 53°F, but the air was still, so it felt quite comfortable.

In any case, the critters were quite active, perhaps because the cool snap reminded them of what is to come, and here’s a doe grazing with her two young bucks at the southwest corner of the soccer fields.

Here’s the budding rack on one buck.

And here’s the budding rack on his twin brother.

I spotted another warbler beside the guardrail, and it’s a black-and-white this time. If ever there was a perfect bird to photograph in light so low that all the color gets washed out, the black-and-white warbler would have to be a lead contender.

On the river at the far north end, the pied-billed grebe was still hanging out with the mallards, and here it is beside a snoozing mallard for size comparison in one of the moments when the sun snuck around the cloud.

There were a couple of kingfishers flitting around the northern island, and here’s one, a female by the glimpse of a red band across her breast, who parked surprisingly close to me and seemed to not yet know the drill. “You’re supposed to take one look at me, Sweetie, and then bolt like a scalded cat.”

On my way back south along the river, a red squirrel, whom I may have already photographed on my way north, had found itself a black walnut and was quite noisily letting everyone in earshot know about all it.

I’ve got a few more pictures from this morning, but I’ve got another short trip coming up, so let me hold onto those for when I’m away and show you the last of my Sedona pictures instead. After the wetlands preserve, Tim took us to the “Bubbling Ponds Preserve“, comprising the Page Springs Fish Hatchery and a stretch of the Oak Creek. There we spotted this stunning and aptly-named flame skimmer or firecracker skimmer (Libellula saturata), a “common dragonfly … native to western North America.”

There were plenty of phainopeplas, red-winged blackbirds, and goldfinches in the nearby trees and bushes, but the big surprise for me was this darling Wilson’s warbler, which I first saw in Estabrook, then again in Yellowstone, and now in Arizona. Ha!

Tim had advised us that this would be a good location to spot the common black hawk (Buteogallus anthracinus), but we searched the skies in vain, and it wasn’t until we were walking along the Oak Creek that I spotted a huge bird swoop up into branches over the water. We had to be patient, but this youngster eventually showed its face. Ta da!

Finally, as we headed back to the van for our trip back to our Airbnb, this painted lady butterfly posed so nicely, I just had to take its picture.