A cold and quiet mid-February morning

It really was +1° at sunrise this morning, but winds were a little lighter than forecast, at 11 mph, and the sky was crystal clear, so it was a very nice time to be in Estabrook Park. One other birder was hardy or foolhardy enough, as the case may be, to come out and join our weekly wildlife walk, and we saw 17 bird species together, but I don’t believe we saw another person in the park.

We stopped by the pond first, which was noisy with dozens of house finches and house sparrows, but here’s a lone robin keeping quiet and basking in the sun at the north end.

We did glimpse at least one white-throated sparrow, and I got a picture of one fox sparrow, but the young white-crowned sparrow gave us the slip today.

At the river, we did glimpse the hermit thrush, and here’s a male red-bellied woodpecker, but the catbird also kept out of sight.

There were still a few common mergansers on the slivers of open river water, but this trio of common goldeneye hens made a nicer picture.

Since that’s it for the pictures I managed to take today, here’s a look at the young bald eagle that flew upstream over the river yesterday morning and spooked all the mallards into the air.

Finally, here’s another look at that female northern cardinal who posed so nicely yesterday.