The crowd gets tough…

The temperature dropped, the clouds cleared out, and the breeze died down, so the frost was back again this morning in Estabrook Park.

My visit got off to a nice enough start when I spotted this American tree sparrow foraging in the lawn beside the pond. We don’t get to see them nearly as much as the white-throated, swamp, song, and even Lincoln’s, so I was happy to get one picture to turn out.

At the river, the wigeons were still with us, but far from shore, so I took a picture of this American herring gull instead. There has been an interesting situation with them recently, because the ebird app I use to keep track of the birds I see has changed this gull’s name from “herring gull (Larus argentatus)” to “American herring gull (Larus smithsonianus)”, and it took several days for that change to ripple through all the systems, which caused a bit of consternation, at least on my part. You can read about the reason behind the change here.

Anyway, I didn’t see a single warbler today, which makes the first time since they first arrived back in August. I did see a pair of Cooper’s hawks, but they were over the old Schlitz candy factory across the river. As I was wishing in vain that the hawks would come my way, a big flock of geese flew in, and I managed to sneak this picture of four of them.

That’s the whole show for today, I’m afraid. Let’s hope for better luck tomorrow.