The Arctic blast settles in, as if it intends to stick around a while.

The gorgeous weather in Estabrook Parked continued this morning with bright blue skies, a little less wind than yesterday, and crisp, cool air, at only -4° instead of the forecast -8°F. Woo hoo!

With the expectation that more of the river had frozen overnight, I headed straight to the river path to see if that had brought with it any new visitors from up north. Things got off to a great start with a pair of common mergansers right at the south end, and here’s the drake, but then I hardly saw a bird on the water until I was at the north end looking farther north toward the bridge with my binoculars. There I could see about a dozen Canada geese, a couple dozen mallards, and even our male belted kingfisher, but not even the goldeneye drake from yesterday. Oh well.

I had skipped the pond on my way north, so I turned east at about the halfway point on my way back south to take the path to the pond that runs along the south edge of the dog park. I had already heard a couple of nuthatches by then, but they were all up pretty high, as it seems they have been all winter, and then this little cutie flew in right at eye level to work the bark of this box elder. I captured a slew of images as it bounced around and worked its way up the trunk, and some are even presentable, but then it just stopped and stared at me and held this perfect nuthatch pose, as if to say, “All right, all right, you’ve been a good boy, so let me make this easy for you.”

When I finally made it to the pond, it was a mob scene. There were dozens of house finches, at least another dozen mourning doves, and even a blue jay, but this male downy woodpecker put on the best show.

This dark-eyed junco managed to get some blue sky in the background.

This robin found itself about the lowest perch possible.

And if this is the male house sparrow from Saturday, it sure did a good job drying itself out.