A short but fruitful visit…

It was a dark and stormy morning in Estabrook Park, but I didn’t realize just how dark and stormy it was going to get until I was already at the pond and checked the weather radar on my phone. Perhaps the birds did know, however, and that is why they were so busy this morning. They all wanted breakfast before the rain came.

There was a great blue heron fishing at the pond, but it was just off the southern tip of the island, and the brush that overhangs the water there is full of discarded fishing line. I don’t even want to take that picture, let alone see it.

Happily, there was also a female belted kingfisher at the far shore, I watched her catch a nice fish, possibly one of the bluegills I saw yesterday, and she took it to a tree free from such distractions.

At the river, the huge surprise was this young great horned owl over the southern island. There was another one calling from nearby, but I only managed to see the one.

Finally, just a bit farther north, a peregrine falcon shot away from the near riverbank like a scalded cat, and I barely even had time to identify it before I lost track of it. My crazy good luck held, however, and it soon perched in the one remaining tall dead tree over the northern island.

By then, the sky had become quite dark, but I was able to prop my camera against a tree and slow the shutter down to 1/30 of a second, which let the ISO slow down to just 125 and minimized noise in the image. I had tried to do that with the owl, but in the time it took me to take three steps towards a conveniently-located tree trunk, the owl had already had enough of me, so all we have is that crazy grainy image above. Oh well.

After that, I hustled home and mostly beat the rain.