A November Soaker…

It was a soggy morning in Estabrook Park, but there was a gap in the rain from about 7am to 8:30, so I snuck in to see if anyone was around.

I found this great blue heron just off the near riverbank, and its expression seemed to match the weather.

A bit farther north of the heron, this white-tailed deer looked to be about just as thrilled.

Even the kingfisher at the north end appeared to be hunkering down.

As I looked back south from the far north end, to see if there were any visitors mixed in with the Canada geese and mallards, my heart skipped a beat when I spotted this sight. As you may already be able to tell, however, it turned out to be just a decoy that somebody lost upriver. This makes the second time I’ve been faked out by plastic. Oh well.

Back at the pond, I had just captured a nice-enough image of the hooded merganser and put the rain cover back over my camera, when the little rascal came up with a healthy-looking crayfish.

First, you have to line it up to go in headfirst, …

then you can start gulping, …

finally, stretching the neck out helps, as we’ve seen before.

Lastly, the sole remaining wood duck continues to linger, and I wonder for how much longer.

PS. Another “rare bird alert” came out over the interwebs, and it was just up in Bayside, and I had to ride my bike to Silver Spring Drive anyway, which is already about a third of the way, so I figured “why not go check it out?”

Donna even offered to help me find it, and we only had to sit still for about ten minutes before this dashing young Harris’s sparrow (Zonotrichia querula) came out to join the house sparrows below a backyard birdfeeder.