Inaugural Estabrook Wildlife Walk

Well, as often happens, the rain this morning was much lighter than forecast. Plus, the temps were unseasonably warm, and the wind was also pretty light, so it was a mighty fine day to kick-off our weekly wildlife walks in Estabrook Park.

The first nice surprise, of course, was that people actually came out to join me, and the second nice surprise was finding a great blue heron on the pond for the first time in a while.

The third surprise was a bird that Jenny spotted high above the paved path along the crest of the bluff, which she thought looked like a robin but bigger. From the back, I couldn’t tell it from a robin either, but sure enough, when we could get a good look at the front of it, we could see that it was our first merlin of the month. Now, that’s some fine spotting!

Other highlights that I failed to photograph include wood ducks on the pond, wigeons on the river, an osprey on the wing with a fish, and a peregrine falcon perched high on one of the radio towers across the river. In all, we counted 31 bird species.

Finally, the warm weather brought out dragonflies one more time, and here’s another autumn meadowhawk beside the river.

Lastly, but not leastly, here’s the inaugural crew, with me on the left, then Jenny, Peggy, Kathy, and Katie. Thanks to everyone for coming out to brave the weather today, and I hope you can make it again next week.

PS: by popular demand, I have finally posted a map of Estabrook Park, for those of you trying to follow along at home, with labels for some of the geographic features I reference.