November arrives with a wintery blast!

After the snow yesterday morning, the day cleared up for a bit, but then late in the afternoon, the snow came back, the wind picked up, and the temperature dropped into the 20s. Happily, by this morning, the wind and precipitation were gone, and all that was left were beautiful blue skies, and about an inch of snow on anything that kept it off the ground.

There was even a bit of ice in places on the pond and the river, but this great blue heron found a clear spot to soak up some of the early-morning sun.

While this belted kingfisher had already been in for a dip and was energetically shaking and preening the water out of its feathers.

I didn’t see any sign of our five yellowlegs from yesterday, but the young bald eagle arrived high above the northern island by the time I was on my way back south.

By the beer garden, I found a couple of trees full of robins. The first tree was offering up little black seeds.

And the second tree was chock full of little red berries.

The berry tree also attracted this male downy woodpecker, but he was after a different meal.

When I stopped by the pond on my way north, I spotted a couple of wood ducks, but the sun hadn’t yet cleared the trees, so it was still pretty dark. Instead, I stopped by again on my way back south to see if I could get a wood duck picture with good light. At first, they were pretty shy, and I had to shoot across the pond.

But then a couple dozen geese flew in, which seemed to provide the wood ducks a sense of security, and I was able to get a nice portrait of the drake in all his finery.

Since we haven’t seen a lot of such a pretty blue sky lately, I tried to get as much use as I could out of it, so here’s a mourning dove, even though I know that not everyone is a fan.

And finally, here’s a male northern cardinal mid chirp.