April finally gets its act together…

What a gorgeous morning we had in Estabrook Park today. With nothing to block the sun, I was able to start my visit at 6:30, which let me beat some of the rush. Plenty of birds were singing, but the first critter to pose for a picture was this red squirrel, busily munching on a nut beside the path from the river to the pond.

The pair of mergansers were gone from the pond, and the wood ducks kept to themselves, so I continued back to the river. There, plenty of brown creepers continue foraging up tree trunks, and this one let us have a nice profile look.

With the horned grebe also gone, the north end was unremarkable, so I turned back south. At the bottom down the bluff from the southern playground, I did find one of the pied-billed grebes again, and here it is.

Finally, back at the south end, I was surprised to find this goldfinch already in his summer finery. All the others I’ve seen so far this year are still wearing their drab winter coats.

Once we got back to Lilongwe, I had a chance to visit the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre while Anne and the team were busy working again. I already showed you a vervet monkey and butterfly from there, so here are the rest of the sights.

First is another Schalow’s turaco, which we already saw in Lilongwe last October, but a little more clearly this time. Man, they are shy birds.

Then a blue monarch, African blue tiger, or dappled monarch butterfly (Tirumala petiverana). I don’t know how “blue” got in the name because all the pictures I can find online show a black butterfly with white spots, just like the one pictured below.

I never saw this creature move, but there were warning signs about Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus) all along the river, and that’s what Google lens identifies it as, so that’s what I’m gonna go with. I kept my distance, but I’d estimate the exposed portion to be about the size of a man.

The reserve was mostly lush, deep forest, and I suppose most of the birds were keeping to the canopy, as was the turaco above, but that left me time to notice the many butterflies closer to the ground, and here’s a soldier pansy or soldier commodore butterfly (Junonia terea) with fancy coloration on the topside/inside and leaf-mimicking camouflage on the underside/outside.

Here are a couple more young vervet monkeys just monkeying around.

Lastly, the brown-veined white butterfly that I already showed you was not the only butterfly on the tall grass along the highway outside the wildlife centre. In fact, it was this blue pansy or dark blue pansy (Junonia oenone), in the same genus as the soldier pansy above, that convinced me to take my camera back out and put it together for one more picture.