We kept the clear skies and calm air from yesterday, but the temperature dipped enough for radiant cooling to frost the grass again in Estabrook Park. It was a perfect morning for the Hot Cider Hustle 5k and half marathon. Luckily, the big event had little impact on life along the Milwaukee River.
The first big breakthrough of the day came early, when this winter wren, the one that I suspect has been toying with me lately, finally relented and let me take about 50 pictures from about 15 feet away, and one of them came out pretty nice. What an amazing creature, eh?
The second breakthrough came soon after and a bit upstream, when this beaver, who I’ve barely managed to capture swimming down the middle of the river for months, swam right to shore in front of me, looked me straight in the eye, and proceeded to gnaw on its breakfast. Time to check the bottom of my boots.
At the north end, the pair of wigeons is still hanging out with the mallards, and here’s the drake.
And I was able to find a full trio of gadwalls for the first time in a while, here’s just one.
The bigger surprise, however, was this killdeer, quite possibly the last one we’ll see until spring, stopped in and called to see if any others were around, but got no reply that I could hear.
Finally, the great blue heron was in the exact same spot as yesterday, but trying harder to get some shuteye in the warm morning sun. When I tried to move to get that stick out of the picture, I inadvertently woke the heron, but I like the sleeping picture better, so I just slowly backed away to let it go right back to sleep.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 