Lots of familiar faces…

It was pretty nice in Estabrook Park at sunrise, but you can tell a change in the weather is coming. The sky now has a thin, white overcast, the breeze is picking up, and I hear rain is on the way.

Until then, however, the critters were plentiful, and my first greeter this morning was this darling young red-headed woodpecker. I’ve seen more of them this year than ever before, and I am holding out hope that a pair will take up residence for the coming year.

On my first visit to the river, I spotted another rusty blackbird perched over the water’s edge.

The pond was quiet, so I headed back to the river where I found this heron preening above the falls.

Upstream of the islands, a young bald eagle flew by just as I was arriving, so all the ducks made themselves scarce. Happily, they eventually trickled back in, and I was thrilled that the wigeon came back with the mallards.

So did the three gadwalls, of which this is one.

As I started to make my way south, I could hear the squirrels crying in the big silver maple at the north end of the wildflower meadow, and I looked for the cause. I had already seen a merlin and a Cooper’s hawk, but I couldn’t find who was upsetting the squirrels until I stepped out onto the exposed river bottom. Then I could see the osprey in its new favorite spot, in the dead tree next to the silver maple.

Farther downstream, I found one of the owls again. I had also seen it on my way north, but it must have shifted a bit because I could see more of its gorgeous plumage on my second pass. It never showed its face, and perhaps it was sound asleep, which may be a good sign.

You may recall that we saw a bunch of does with a fawn one day, then one of three bucks another day, and wondered if they ever met up. Welp, wonder no more. Today I watched them chase each other around on the southern island, and here go a couple of does.

And here comes one of the bucks in hot pursuit.

Finally, there are still skippers, whites, and sulphur butterflies around, but I managed at last to capture an image of what will probably be our final dragonfly of the year, so here you go. This is a green darner, and they really seem to prefer perching on the ugliest plant they can find. Oh well.