November prepares to exit as it arrived

I spent some time with family this weekend, as I hope you were able to, and I left the woods to others for a bit. Meanwhile, our second snow of November has arrived in Estabrook Park, and this morning I ventured back to see who might still be around.

The wood duck drake, who by now seems likely to have some disability preventing him from flying south, was still looking healthy, if less than pleased with the weather, on the pond this morning.

I saw a couple of great blue herons on the river, who do stick around for the winter even when healthy, and this one looked about as thrilled with the precipitation as the wood duck.

At the north end, I heard that I had just missed a pair of mature eagles, and there was no sign of the osprey today, but this house finch made a pretty nice consolation picture.

Perhaps because the eagles had moved on, the male belted kingfisher was back in his semi-regular spot high over the northern island.

Back below the falls, I was happy to see a hermit thrush that still hadn’t amscrayed yet.

The first big surprise of the day was watching a huge raptor glide through the woods south of the dog park. As I tried to ID it, I noticed its head looked rounder than the raptors I usually see in flight, and when I caught up to where it had perched, I found out why. It was a great horned owl, but I don’t know if it was the one we often see on the southern island, who wasn’t in this morning, or another bird. Either way, what an amazing sight, right?

The second big surprise of the day, when I returned to the pond, was finally being able to capture an image, good enough for identification purposes anyway, if nowhere near a portrait, of a mink scampering along the far shore. The white snow sure helped!

The third big surprise of the day was spotting a plump-looking muskrat up on the ice already forming on the water.

Finally, the wood duck was still there and looking a little more contented, if only because it was probably asleep.