If you don’t live around here, and/or you didn’t watch live television last evening, you may not yet have heard that Wisconsin had its first ever February tornado touch down last evening. So, there’s been a change in the weather. The sun is bright, the sky is blue, and I even had enough light to venture into Estabrook Park before 7am this morning for the first time in 2024, but it is still quite breezy out there.
I don’t know if it is just a coincidence, or if they could feel it coming and got out of Dodge, but all the recent aquatic winter visitors were gone this morning: the goldeneyes, red-breasted merganser, and common mergansers. Instead, we’re left with our hardy year-rounders, and here’s a male downy woodpecker beside the pond.
For a moment, things got busy there, and I also managed to catch this goldfinch in winter plumage against that pretty blue sky.
Finally, I had almost given up on spotting a hairy woodpecker and was just about to head home when a pair started flitting around in a tree right by the middle playground, and here’s the male.
Lastly, I had one more decent picture left over from yesterday of the goldeneye drake, before he caught that crayfish, so here he is again, in case the next time we get to see the likes of him isn’t until next winter.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 