October keeps on delivering…

The stunningly beautiful weather in Estabrook Park just keeps coming, and today was just as clear and just as calm as yesterday, but a smidge warmer. Before we get into today’s sights, however, I still have some from yesterday to show you.

The yellow-bellied sapsuckers have not all passed through yet, and this gorgeous creature was sipping sap from a tree right over the riverbank at the north end.

Almost directly above the sapsucker, an osprey came to check on our fish situation and to make sure we are not overstocked.

Just a bit upstream of those two, this fox sparrow tried to outdo the pose of the one from about a week ago.

Not to let the fox sparrows get ahead, this Lincoln’s sparrow did improve upon the pose of the one from last week. That one was far too backlit, and I had to massage the image quite a bit to salvage it. This one is almost perfect right out of the can.

Alright, that’s it for yesterday, now on to today. There was only one owl this morning, and it was in the same tree as yesterday, but appeared to be sound asleep today.

At the northern island, there was a merlin perched in a tree above it again, but the surprise today was when it soon came down to check out the river water.

As I was taking pictures of the first merlin, a second suddenly appeared back atop the island, and I needed a couple of doubletakes to make sure I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Perhaps feeling the comfort of a lookout above, the first merlin, who clearly knew I was sitting not even 50 yards away, decided it was time for a bath.

Here it is all wetted down and ready to go perch in the sun and preen.

As if that wasn’t enough raptor for any morning, this Cooper’s hawk swooped in and perched right over the paved path just south of where it runs right next to the parkway. I see now, from the comfort of my dining room that it is sporting some jewelry, and we haven’t seen much of that in a while.

At the far south end, this cute little yellow-rumped warbler took a short pause from chasing down bugs to do its best palm warbler imitation, but nobody beats the palms at this game.

Finally, I did see one skipper, but I figured I’d have to feature yet another sulphur or white for butterfly of the day. Then this amazing creature, which looks like a cross between sulphurs and whites, appeared on the sow thistle beside the southern soccer fields. What could it be, I wondered. Perhaps a hybrid? I read that “hybridization runs rampant in these … butterflies,” so it could well be. We may never know.