The huge storm system, which brought us snow two mornings in a row, has finally moved on, and I can’t see a cloud in the sky right now, but it was still pretty cloudy when I visited Estabrook Park earlier this morning. Happily, there was still enough light to capture this image of our first pied-billed grebe of the season. There were two of them, in fact, but I couldn’t manage a picture of them together. The last time was saw one was back in October.
This pair of red-breasted merganser drakes on the pond, however, just needed a moment to drift into a nice tight formation for me.
When the sun finally did start to poke through the clouds, it was just in time to light up this brown creeper as it took a moment to preen itself.
It appears that the horned grebe has finally moved on, and the belted kingfisher didn’t want to show its face, so that’s all I have from Estabrook for today. There are more pictures from Malawi, however, so let me squeeze a couple more in.
Here’s one of the two African pied wagtails (Motacilla aguimp) that I saw often enough in Jelia Park that they seemed to get used to me. By the last day, I was able to get this nice portrait. We saw a mountain wagtail at Dzalanyama, a western yellow wagtail on the Ackerdijkse Plassen in South Holland, and plenty of white wagtails all over South Holland, but this is my first African pied wagtail. Here’s a nice little video of a wagtail wagging its tail, and all the ones I have seen so far do this.
On our long drive from Tongole Lodge, we passed many fields with corn or just tall grass, and we kept glimpsing dramatic red and black birds perched on the stalks, but it wasn’t until I peeked over the wall surrounding Jelia Park into the neighboring fields that I could start taking pictures of one. They were very shy, and it took me many tries, but here finally is an astounding black-winged bishop (Euplectes hordeaceus)
Finally, here’s another look at a yellow-fronted canary, showing a bit of its namesake yellow front.
That’s finally it for Jelia Park, and the next stop will be back in Lilongwe, from which there are still amazing creatures to see.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 
I love the photo of the Brown Creeper. Here’s a paragraph I wrote about birdwatching in Riverside Park for Milwaukee Magazine (“Make a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul,” May 2015):
For me, the weekly walks are less about citizen
science and more about a spiritual connection.
They offer ritual, community and the sense of
something greater than myself. At the end of one
walk, we stopped at the bird banding station, where
a bander held a brown creeper. From a distance,
they look like just another “LBJ” (“little brown job,” in birder-speak). Seen up close, their feathers have an amazingly intricate pattern of white, tan and black. My mother used to say, “How could anyone not believe in God after seeing a pansy?” For years, I’ve doubted the existence of God. Thanks to the brown creeper, I’m revisiting that.
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