Special treats…

The weather in Estabrook Park this morning was nicer than forecast, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky at sunrise. Plus, the air was still, and the temperature was only seasonably cool, so it was a glorious morning to go enjoy nature and look for wildlife.

With all that sunlight, I was out earlier than usual, and I made it to the river in time to catch this cutie swimming home. Even better, I was near a large tree when I spotted it, so I could tuck out of sight and avoid causing it to dive, or even worse, splash its tail in annoyance.

Therefore, when it had swum past the tree, I could get another look as it continued downstream.

Best of all, it soon stopped, somehow didn’t see me or didn’t recognize me as a threat, and proceeded to grab one last nibble before bed.

As I’ve mentioned before, when beaver gnaw the bark off of sticks, it looks just as though they are eating corn off the cob: moving the stick from its left to right as it nibbles, then rotating the stick, backing it up, and repeating. Ha!

Anyway, it lingered so long, that it even dawned on me to try capturing some video, and here it is.

Then it finally swam on, and I continued north. On a normal morning, that would have pretty much filled my quota of amazing sights completely, and I’d be lucky to follow that up with a sparrow picture. Well, this was not a normal morning because when I reached the southern island, look who I found hiding in the branches: one of our great horned owls!

I realize that its pose is nowhere near as nice as the one on Sunday, but on Sunday I found only one. Today, I found two, and here’s the second one hiding even deeper in the sticks. We haven’t seen two of them together on the island since last winter. Hot diggity dog!

Well, after that I did struggle even to get a sparrow picture, but the surprises weren’t over yet. The picture below may not look like much, but if you look closely, you can see a well-camouflaged spider that I watched skitter right across the surface of the water, just as a water strider does. I have never seen that before from a spider, and the culprit appears to be a shore spider (Pardosa milvina), as best as I can tell.

Finally, the great blue herons are still fishing on the river, and here’s one, perched out on a low branch, who just saw something move in the water below.