Odds and ends…

Despite the rosy forecast, the sun turned out to be the little engine that couldn’t get the job done this morning. Sure, the air was nice and still, for a change, but the clouds were pretty thick, and it has taken the sun nearly till noon to clear them out. Oh well.

This picture of our male American kestrel, is actually from yesterday afternoon and across the river. After I had sent you my post, I saw that someone reported seeing a white-fronted goose on the lawn in front of the Northshore Montessori School, and I haven’t seen any since I lived in South Holland, so I hustled right over there, but it was already gone. Dang, but my consolation prize was finding the kestrel hunting from the lamp posts around the lawn.

Despite the cloud cover this morning, I did walk through Estabrook, and since I was alone, the screech-owl was in. Even better, it let us have the best glimpse yet of its big yellow eyes.

I didn’t see anything new at the pond, the swallows were all sleeping in, and my grebe and teal pictures from yesterday were better than anything I could get today on the river. Instead, the excitement was over the downstream island, where one of the great horned owls was perched.

It wasn’t alone, however, and here’s one of the crows urging it to perch in some other park.

In fact, there were two crows, but I never saw the owl move, other than rotating its head, and the crows eventually just declared victory and went home.

I did see a few more yellow-rumped warblers beside the river, and made a valiant attempt at another picture, but I was getting nowhere until this brown creeper took pity on me and swooped in to provide an image that I could capture.

As I was heading home, the sun was able to poke through the clouds a bit, and it lit up this hermit thrush just perfectly.

Finally, I had so many pictures of wildlife to show you yesterday that I completely forget to get this picture off my phone. It shows the back 1/3 of a trilobite fossil, from the so-called “Milwaukee Formation“, which is about 385 million years old. I found it right at the water’s edge as I was reaching down to pick up a bit of leftover fishing tackle. How cool is that?

Lastly, speaking of cool pictures from my phone, I also found yesterday my first park beer in a while, this time floating in the pond. Sweet!