The beautiful weather continued this morning in Estabrook Park, but it was even a bit cooler than yesterday and with some thin cirrus clouds up high to whiten the sky. When I arrived at the pond, I found the wood duck hen with her five, week-old ducklings.
As I was trying to get a decent wood duck picture and count the ducklings to make sure there were five, the mallard hen swam right over with her own duckling and hopped up on shore, as if I had something for them. “Sorry Sweeties, we shouldn’t feed wild ducks.” Even with my backup lens, though, I had to zoom out to fit them in the image!
On my way to the river, I spotted a bluebird again up on the wire, and we haven’t seen one in a while, so I detoured that way to see if I could capture an image. But first, this chickadee was almost begging me to take its picture.
Then, this deer came out of the wood at the crest of the bluff, and I couldn’t pass that up.
But then I finally reached the female bluebird. Thank goodness she waited for me. I didn’t see any sign of the male.
On my way back south after checking on the swallows under the bridge, I found the deer again.
On my second visit to the pond, I was able to confirm at last that there are indeed to wood duck hens with ducklings, and here’s the one with seven fresh ones. Not all seven are in the picture because at least two of them were busy chasing down whatever they could find on the surface of the water.
Finally, I stopped by the pollinator garden on my way home, and I captured our first of many monarch butterfly images for the season. It was sampling the nectar from what appears to be some species of wallflower (Erysimum).
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 