The beautiful weather in Estabrook Park continued this morning, if a little warmer and a little breezier than yesterday. Plus, my adjustment to this time zone continues to take its sweet time, so I was up nice and early again, and my visit got off to another nice and early start.
The pond continues to host belted kingfishers, mallards, this one great blue heron, and …
a slew of sleepy wood ducks.
The river still hosts dozens of mallards, a few Canada geese, a couple of wood ducks, and a couple of great blue herons, but nobody uncommon today. Instead, the uncommon birds were back onshore, and here’s an incognito blackpoll warbler.
I did catch a glimpse of one male American redstart, but he was super shy. The females, on the other hand, were far more plentiful and lot bolder.
I thought this next bird was another yellow warbler, at first, but closer inspection from the comfort of my dining room table suggests that it is a Wilson’s warbler instead with just a sliver of its distinct black cap visible above its eye.
Finally, on my way home, I spotted another autumn meadowhawk.
That’s all I’ve got for today, but there were still a lot of Swainson’s thrushes around, and here’s another picture from yesterday.
By the time I reached the weeds beside the southern soccer fields this morning, the breeze was up enough to keep the butterflies down, but there were so many taking advantage of the still air yesterday that I have this American lady to show you.
Back to the Baltics, the only “crow” I saw for most of the trip was the black-and-grey hooded crow, as we first saw in Ljubljana. Thus, I was excited to see a pair of large, all-black birds when we got to Vilnius, and I figured they were carrion crows, as we saw in South Holland, or ravens, as we’ve seen in the American west. Instead, that pale face is not merely a molt gone awry, and it makes them the very first rooks (Corvus frugilegus) I have ever identified. I am sure that you will be as stunned to learn as I just was that the word “rookery” was first coined to describe their collective tree-top nests and then later used to describe similar nesting colonies by other species.
In that same Vilnius park, there are three small ponds with mallards, Eurasian coots, and moorhens, and I found this beauty, the first water rail (Rallus aquaticus) I’ve ever managed to photograph, skulking among the reeds along the edge of one of them in the dim morning light.
Lastly, that American lady above sure is pretty, but I was so happy yesterday to spend some quality time with that eastern tailed-blue, that I’m gonna make it the butterfly of the day for a second day in a row.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 