The wind takes a breather…

The skies stayed clear, and the air stayed cold, but the wind almost stopped, so it was a very nice morning in Estabrook Park, despite the hoar frost on the grass in places.

My first big surprise came at the far northwest end, where I had gone to check on the pigeon chicks and see if any barn swallows had started nesting yet. I couldn’t really see the chicks today, and there were no barn swallows yet, but check out this brood of seventeen (17!) goslings I got to watch steam by. My bet is that this is the result of two or more broods combining into a crèche, as we’ve seen before, and one goose did not lay seventeen eggs, but still, that’s a lot of goslings.

On my way back downstream, and back on shore, I found my first palm warbler willing to sit for a portrait.

Farther downstream, a great horned owl was in, but this picture from Wednesday, which I didn’t have room to show you then, came out better than anything I could manage today.

The next big surprise came near the south end. There was a steady stream of sparrows flitting north beside the river, and most appeared to be white-throated, but this little cutie behaved slightly differently, and that’s because it is our first Lincoln’s sparrow of the year. Hurray!

As I was crossing the soccer fields on my way toward the exit, I spotted a bird in a tree over the southern parking lot again, but this was no vesper sparrow. Instead, it was this young and quite lightly-colored red-tailed hawk.

Finally, the nice still air today allowed the bugs to waft nice and high into the air and trees, and the warblers followed them, so I didn’t have as much luck with pictures as I did yesterday. Fortunately, I have a few extra pictures from yesterday, when everyone was keeping close to the ground, and here’s a female northern flicker who couldn’t have struck a better pose for us.

Lastly, your blossom of the day is this jack-in-the-pulpit, which is the first one I’ve seen this year.