Nothin’ but raptors and mammals…

Not only did it rain again overnight, but it was still raining when the sun tried to come up this morning. Plus, the winds were strong, so I was tempted to skip my visit to Estabrook altogether. But Anne was undaunted and grabbed her umbrella to go for a walk anyway, so when the skies lightened a bit, I went out to give it a try myself.

Well, the lightening sky was just a teaser, and I was sure glad I brought the rain cover for my camera. By the time I reached the pond, however, things were finally drying out, and I was able to capture this image of another red-tailed hawk, in a tree right over where I saw the Cooper’s hawk yesterday.

It soon made a grab for this squirrel in the next tree over, but it just missed.

I was quite surprised to watch the squirrel inch down that trunk toward the hawk. I wondered what kind of strategery was that.

But then the hawk jumped again, came up empty, and ended up back where it started. The squirrel’s crazy ploy worked, this time. Also, how’s that for a red tail?

Then somebody got out of a car, perhaps to go to the dog park, and I’ve learned that birds might tolerate one person watching them, but two are nearly always one too many, so it took off to look for squirrels elsewhere, and I continued on to the river.

When I got to the southern island, I was thrilled to see one of the bucks again, and this time it was in no hurry, so I could get a nice portrait.

Then I noticed something moving in the bushes behind it, and I couldn’t believe it when this much-more-mature buck emerged. They faced off for a moment, and then the youngster eased itself out of sight.

As if that wasn’t already amazing enough, the mature buck then gave me this gorgeous pose. In addition to those antlers, look at the neck on that guy! I was a little glad to have some river between us.

Anyway, once I got the pictures I wanted, I excused myself and continued upstream. Between the islands, I only saw geese, mallards, and a heron on the far shore, so I kept going until I reached the tree where we’ve been seeing the osprey lately. As I searched through the leaves to see if the osprey was in today, I could see a big bird, but it turned out to be a bald eagle instead. I’ll take it!

It was perched in a slightly different spot, so I couldn’t find a clear shot through the leaves, and I eventually ventured out onto the exposed river bottom for a better look.

Finally, on my way back south, this little cutie on the trail kindly held its ground as I brought my camera to my eye, which let me round out today’s collection of mammals and raptors.