The pond was a bit crowded this morning when I arrived, so I kept right on going, but as I crossed the parkway, I finally got a chance to document this character. That’s a male red-winged blackbird with one leg, and I’ve been see him foraging on the west lawn and vigorously protecting his territory at the pond for weeks. That is one tough bird!
At the river, the beaver were keeping mostly out of sight again, and you can just see the eye of this one peeking over the log in the foreground, perhaps to see if I’ve left so everyone can come out to play.
There were fewer people at the pond during my second visit, but still plenty of birds, and here’s a great blue heron catching the first fish I believe I’ve seen caught this year.
Meanwhile, a green heron was probably hoping for the same success.
And, a female belted kingfisher finally let us get a nice look at her.
Back at the river, here’s a middling painted turtle, a large pond slider, and a light blue damselfly perched on its nose. There was even a second pond slider farther up the log, but I like the grouping of this trio. I did try moving to avoid the bit of grass hanging down across the damselfly, but they sure can be flighty things, and by then it had already moved.
At the soccer fields, I thought this might be the painted lady we saw on Sunday, but upon closer inspection, that little bit of a blue eye spot on the rear wing makes it an American lady instead.
I didn’t see much else there, so I checked the little open space beside the river at the far south end. There I found a nice female powdered dancer, …
my first red milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus) of the season, …
a lot of delicious raspberries, …
and this “Wild Kingdom” scene of my very first eastern yellow-backed laphria (Laphria thoracica), a “bumble bee mimic robber fly,” doing in a honey bee it has just caught.
Finally, just as I was leaving Estabrook Park, I found a brand-new-looking buckeye.
It even gave us a glimpse of its less-extravagantly-marked under/out/ventral side.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 