A sign of sights to come, with any luck.

Here are the top three sights I saw in Estabrook Park this morning. At number three, the great horned owl, who has been a semi-regular fixture for the last five weeks or so, was in again, and in almost exactly the same spot as yesterday.

At number two, a great blue heron was back and on the pond to boot. I haven’t seen one since December 5th, and I was beginning to wonder if they’d given up on Estabrook, at least for the winter.

And the number one sight I saw this morning was a female common merganser, whom we haven’t seen since April 11, on the river north of the northern island. Woo hoo! I hope she’s a sign that the winter birds will start to trickle in.