The weather this morning was just as nice as forecast, so I entered Estabrook Park with high hopes just a few minutes before sunrise, and the critters did not disappoint.
The first treat of the day, and probably the biggest by any measure of the (insert time period here), was encountering this family of American river otters barely twenty feet away. To make it even more fun, they appeared to be as interested in me as I was in them, and they took turns bobbing up for a closer look, so I have more pictures to milk for the rest of the week. You may recall that I saw them a couple of times at a good distance back east this winter, but I’ve only ever seen them in Estabrook once before, and that was almost four years ago.
Once they had all satisfied their curiosity and dove under for the last time, I stuck around a bit in case one might resurface again, and look who soon came swimming by, the beaver that we often saw there early last summer. I wonder what they think of each other.
The red-breasted merganser and green-winged teal seem to have finally moved on, and the most interesting sight at the north end is the one remaining goldeneye, but I left it alone today. On my hike to the pond, on the other hand, I first heard and then saw our first brown-headed cowbird of the year. Yippee!
Barely a hundred yards past the cowbird and on the softball field, I finally got my first picture for this year of the killdeer I’ve been hearing for a week or two. Yippee-ki-yay!
Once I finally reached the pond, it took me a while to find this wood duck hen trying to take a nap deep in the bushes on the northern tip of the island.
I’ve already shown you the mallards and the geese on the pond this week, so I headed back to the river, and as I passed the dog park, this starling in the birch tree right out front caught my ear and then my eye. That’s quite a rainbow of iridescence it has, eh?
Finally, when I reached the river again, I found our visiting ring-necked hen quite a ways down stream of her spot yesterday but more relaxed, a lot closer to shore, and in some gorgeous morning light.
Man, with the way this week’s been going, I can’t wait to see who I’ll find next. Right?
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 