First, a correction. Karen Wesener wrote in response to yesterday’s post that “butterflies emerge from a chrysalis, not a cocoon. Cocoons are for moths.” In other news, my entire fact checking team chose a terrible week to go on vacation and left me here by myself to make up stuff willy-nilly.
Anyway, it was a pretty soggy morning in Estabrook Park but not a complete washout. There was a green heron on the pond doing its best Gru imitation.
There were over a dozen wood ducks, many of whom we’ve watched grow up since they first hatched, and here’s a quartet keeping four eyes on me.
Here’s a fledged robin on the lawn east of the pond and still getting fed by a parent.
While a male house finch watched impassively from above.
Back on the pond, the hooded merganser is still with us, and here it is with a nice big fish while a wood duck hurries over to offer help.
The hoodie declined any assistance and deftly choked down that fish all on its own.
As I started to make my way back south, I spotted this northern cardinal parked right in the middle of the road. I couldn’t tell if it had been injured or was just a fledgling that can’t fly too well yet, but I did manage to urge it back up onto the lawn.
The flowers were all empty today, but I was able to sneak out yesterday afternoon, when the sun was still shining, and here’s the littlest bee I’ve ever seen, on the cone of a purple cone flower. It was easily half the size of a honeybee, and the interwebs suggest that it is our first ever ligated furrow bee (Halictus ligatus).
Finally, the butterfly of the day, also from yesterday, but desperate times call for desperate measure, is this dashing silver-spotted skipper on a burdock blossom.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 