Thank heaven for little birds…

After the wind howled all night long, it had backed off to just 18 mph at sunrise this morning. Add that to an air temperature of a chilly 14°F, and the windchill dipped into negative territory for the first time this year in Estabrook Park. I don’t know if that was the cause, or it was just coincidence, but both the redhead and the common mergansers were nowhere to be found today. I didn’t see a single raptor, either. In fact, the only “large” birds I saw were a few Canada geese and dozens of mallards. Thus, the little birds ruled the day.

I haven’t gotten a picture of one of these since September, but here’s a white-throated sparrow keeping warm in the brush beside the pond. We’re just inside the northern edge of their winter range, so this really shouldn’t be a shocker, but they’ve been hiding pretty good in the meanwhile.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the skies were crystal clear, so it was a perfect time for getting a male northern cardinal picture.

The fox sparrow winter range extends slightly less far north than the white-throats, but we had two of them at the pond today, as well.

We are clearly north of the bluebird’s winter range, by at least a couple hundred miles, so it was a real treat to find this pair of stragglers competing with the robins for berries. Here’s the female, …

and here’s the male. “Safe travels, you two, and keep warm in the meantime!”

Finally, back at the river, this little rascal kept teasing me with fleeting glimpses. Every time I gave up and decided to go on home, it would flit in front of me again. After three or four times, it must have grown tired of the game, so then it chose a nice sunny perch and put on a little show instead. First it posed this way, …

and then it posed that way. It’s a swamp sparrow, which I last showed you back in November, and we’re right on the northern edge of its year-round range.

I see that the forecast calls for a slight increase in temperature and a slight decrease in wind speed at sunrise tomorrow, so maybe the bigger critters will come back out to play. Keep your fingers crossed.