Some real snow at last, maybe…

It sure is snowing in Estabrook now, but it really didn’t get going until about 9am. Thus, I had nearly two hours this morning to take some pictures, and here’s what I got.

I was checking for the song sparrow or winter wren by the river, and there were a couple of birds, perhaps downy woodpeckers, incessantly making distress calls, so I tried to find what they were distressed about. As I approached the edge of the water, I inadvertently spooked this Cooper’s hawk, who flew up into the big maple tree that grows there.

Besides sporting two ankle bracelets, which the others we’ve been seeing lately do not appear to have, it kept wiping its beak on that branch, which got me to wonder what it was wiping off its beak, so I looked over the edge, and there I found a fresh common merganser hen carcass lying on the ice.

It was pretty grewsome, so I’ll spare you the picture, but I immediately wondered if it might have succumbed to the new avian flu that’s going around, since I highly doubt the diminutive Cooper’s did in the heftier merganser all by itself.

I called DNR, but they said they are not yet concerned about single birds, so I used a long stick to bring the carcass up to the dumpster in the maintenance yard, to at least keep other birds off of it, and went on my way while hoping for the best.

I didn’t see anything to photograph at the north end or the pond, and I only took my camera back out when I found the song sparrow right about where I had been looking for it earlier. You can see that the snow had really started to accumulate by then.

I didn’t see the winter wren at all today, but I do have one more nice picture from yesterday, so here you go. Don’t its claws look like they are from a much larger bird that the wren is merely perched on them?

Finally, I opted to go home along the paved path atop the bluff, instead of trying my luck on the hilly river trail in these conditions. At the top of stairway nine, I gave one more look into the bushes for the catbird, and found this mourning dove collecting snow and looking less than thrilled with that development.

This snow storm is forecast to be done by tomorrow morning, and the storm predicted for Friday should be mostly over by Saturday morning, so  Havenwoods State Forest should be a regular winter wonderland for the Saturday afternoon Winter Break Milwaukee. As I mentioned yesterday, Bird City Milwaukee will be leading a couple of 1-hour bird walks at 1 and 2 pm “through the quieter blue trail that leads to the small pond. [They have] binoculars and monoculars they can loan you for free if you bring a piece of collateral to surrender, like an ID.” I’ll be there from 12 to 4pm, so come on out if you are able, and I’ll see you there.