Fall migration continues!

Anne and I arrived home, safe and sound, just around midnight last night, and I had gotten some sleep on the flight, so I was awake again by 4 am. Luckily, it was a perfect morning in Estabrook Park, and I only had to wait until 6 am to have enough light to see who might be home.

Better yet, there were also plenty of critters up getting a jump on the holiday weekend, and here’s a wide-awake osprey perched high above the northern island.

I was a little nervous when we left that I might have seen my last warbler of the year, but I needn’t have worried because it didn’t take me long to spot this pretty little magnolia warbler, my first for the fall migration.

There were also quite a few Swainson’s thrushes, which we haven’t seen since the spring, tanking up along the river to fuel their journeys south to Central and South America.

Meanwhile, this red squirrel was busily shucking a walnut, perhaps to store up for the Wisconsin winter ahead.

Back by the pond, I was thrilled to learn that monarch butterflies are still here.

Out on the water, this green heron struck quite a pose as it stretched one wing at a time.

The weeds beside the southern soccer fields are still full of blossoms and bugs, and here’s a handsome Peck’s skipper on a thistle.

We still have dragonflies, too, and here’s a dashing blue dasher.

Finally, I found this tiny and pristine, eastern tailed-blue butterfly (Cupido comyntas) enjoying some goldenrod in the pollinator garden, and that’s gonna be our butterfly of the day.

Lastly, I do have a few pictures from our trip, despite our focus on savoring the mostly-urban sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the Baltics.

I came across this Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus), my very first, while strolling along the top of an earthen portion of the ancient city wall of Tallinn, Estonia. There were a bunch feeding on the seeds of weeds, and I first thought they were house sparrows, but that dark patch on their cheek gives them away.

A couple of days later, we were in Riga, Latvia, and I found my first hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes), a juvenile, in a park just outside town.

Finally, I found my very first black redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros), an eastern morph female, in a city park in Vilnius, Lithuania. The males look a lot more like the American redstart males we get to see in Estabrook Park.

See ya next month!