More faces we haven’t seen in a while.

The air was a smidge warmer and a lot calmer this morning in Estabrook Park, and it would have been a perfect day except for a high, thin overcast that gave the sky a bright white color. The birds didn’t seem to mind, however, and they put on quite a show.

The great blue heron was already on the pond when I arrived, and it grabbed a quick snack before the regular crowd assembled for their fishing lessons.

At the river, there was a pair of female blue-winged teals, …

and here they are flashing us that namesake wing.

The far bigger surprise, if my identification is correct, would be this molting male cinnamon teal far out on the water. It’s got a nice cinnamony color and a red eye, as far as I can tell. It would be the first such teal spotted in Estabrook, but not the first in Milwaukee. Curiously, there was also a young or female hooded merganser with it, and that’s the bird with its back to us just under the tail of the teal and about to nudge the teal off that rock so it can have a turn at preening in the sun.

While I was taking countless pictures of the teal, in hopes that one would come out, check out the action I noticed over the Barnabas Business Center across the river. That’s a Cooper’s hawk, the smaller bird on top, fighting with an American crow, the larger, black bird beneath it.

Anyway, back on our side of the river, the little migrant birds were thick in the trees, and here’s a black-and-white warbler, …

a red-eyed vireo flashing its red eye, …

a young or female chestnut sided warbler, pictured for the first time this fall, …

a Tennessee warbler wondering if maybe somebody’s trying to hide inside that curled up leaf, …

and yet another black-throated green warbler. I took all these pictures while barely taking a step.

Finally, there were a few monarchs out and about, now that the wind has died down, and here’s your butterfly of the day.