A morning so great, I dare not summarize it!

It was another beautiful and cool morning in Estabrook Park, I was walking north along the river path, and as I neared the boardwalk just below the falls, a couple of chickadees flitting into a bare tree at the top of the bluff caught my eye. I see chickadees all the time, of course, but I paused for a second just to make sure my first impression was correct, and there was a third bird with them who appeared, from that distance, to have an orange tint. I tried my binoculars, and I could not believe what I saw: our first blackburnian warbler of the fall migration. Woo hoo!

I immediately grabbed a couple of shots with my camera, but it was pretty far away, and then I thought maybe it would stay there for a second or two. So, I ran up the boardwalk, took the stairs up to the beer garden two at a time, and then did my best smooth-and-fast walk back to the tree it was in. Sure enough, the little darling had waited for me and even posed for a portrait. Ta da!

Well, that was an amazing way to start the morning, but there was more park to see, so I eventually continued north along the river. When I reached the bottom of stairway three, look who I spotted at the top of a bare tree over the southern island: our first olive-sided flycatcher of the fall migration. Holy Smokes!

When I finally got to the north end, there were dozens of Canada geese and mallards on the river, as has been the norm lately, but no raptors today. Oh well. Instead, I was very happy to see this quartet of recently fledged wood ducks fly in.

In the sky, there were a half dozen swifts, at least one barn swallow, and five pigeons made a fly over, so I was thinking of skipping the hike up to the Port Washington Road bridge. I thought I spotted a cliff swallow farther upstream, however, which we haven’t seen in a while, so I figured I better go up to check it out anyway. Well, the swallows turned out to be rough-winged, which I have seen lately, but the big surprise was spotting this cutie scurrying across the path. We haven’t seen a mink since May 10. How could this morning get any better?

I headed back south, and after checking the river again, thought I’d try the top of the bluff. The breeze was out of the west, and so the bugs would be pushed to the east side of the trees, where the warblers would follow them. When I got up there, look who I found instead, our first merlin of the fall. I don’t believe we’ve seen one in Estabrook since last December.

After that, things finally started to settle down. A blue jay posed for a nice picture as I hiked over to the pond.

Not all the wood ducks have fled the pond, yet, and here’s a couple enjoying the morning sun.

A great blue heron scratched another itch.

At the pollinator garden, there were a couple of dragonflies which did not look familiar. They seemed to be quite happy flying without stop, but one eventually did park for a minute to let me have this image. Say “hello” to the very first wandering glider (Pantala flavescens) I’ve ever seen. I read that other common names include “globe skimmer” and “globe wanderer” because “it is considered to be the most widespread dragonfly on the planet, with good population on every continent except Antarctica … Globe skimmers make an annual multigenerational journey of some 18,000 km (about 11,200 miles); to complete the migration, individual globe skimmers fly more than 6,000 km (3,730 miles)—one of the farthest known migrations of all insect species.” Yikes! No wonder they were in no hurry to perch.

After all that, we’re gonna need a good butterfly of the day, so I’d better go with a monarch.