The wind was back in Estabrook Park this morning, but at least the sun was out, and the temps were pretty mild. In fact, it was the first above-freezing sunrise here since I don’t know when. The gray catbird and hermit thrush are also back, but they eluded my camera this morning. Instead, the first picture I managed to get didn’t come until the far north end, where I found this sole goldeneye hen.
The fanciest sparrow I saw at the pond was the young white-crowned sparrow, but it didn’t want any pictures today either, so I headed back to the river. There I found this handsome fellow hanging with the mallards. He looks a lot like a mallard drake, but he’s missing the dark breast they usually have. Thus, he probably has somebody other than a mallard, maybe a gadwall, somewhere in his family tree.
Finally, the common mergansers are still with us, and here’s a hen again, parked right in front of a couple of mallard drakes who do have their traditional dark breasts.
And that would’ve been it for today, if Jeff Bentoff, who showed us that screech-owl at the Shorewood Nature Preserve back in 2023, hadn’t asked if I wanted to see something really cool. I said “yes”, of course, so off we went to an undisclosed location, NOT Estabrook Park, to find this beauty.
That, dear readers, is my very first long-eared owl (Asio otus), who is not common around here. In pictures I’d seen, I thought they looked similar to our great horned owls, but they are a lot smaller in person. What a treat, nevertheless. “Thanks, Jeff!”
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 