The wind is back to howling again this afternoon, but there was a little while this morning when it was on break. Plus, temps were in the upper twenties, and the sky was mostly clear, so it was a another pretty nice January morning in Estabrook Park.
I was finally able to catch one of the eagles that has been scaring off the mallards lately as it glides up and down the river. Here it is perched over the northern island, but it was super shy, and this is as close as it would let me get.
I was too far south to see how the muskrats reacted as the eagle soared over, but by the time I got to the far north end, there were two of them up on the ice again.
This trio of crows did seem unimpressed, however, and they were perched on the island with the eagle. They regularly give great horned owls a hard time, after all, and once the eagle took off, they hopped down to the ice to check out a little patch of open water.
At the pond, our little red squirrel looked quite a bit warmer today, and it was busy turning that walnut shell into sawdust.
I couldn’t get any fancy sparrow pictures again today, but this dark-eyed junco put on a nice show from the top of a sumac seed cluster.
Here it is showing how to shuck a seed.
As I hiked to the river to look in vain for the hermit thrush, this female hairy woodpecker let us have a good look at her claws.
Finally, the relatively warm weather made it bath day for the robins, and here’s one splish-splashing away as two others wait their turn.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 