Our first stop on our way home from L’viv is Kraków, the medieval capital of Poland, and I finally had a chance this morning to get out early and take some pictures of the local wildlife. Yay!
One of the first locals to greet me was this male black redstart. I saw my first redstart in Slovenia, and then they seemed ubiquitous in the Balkans, so now I’m getting a feel for how far their range extends.
It took me a minute to recognize this next face. I thought it might be a young blackbird, at first, but its size and the hint of a white eyebrow tipped me off to the first fieldfare I’ve seen in a while.
As usual, not all the critters here have wings, and here’s a Eurasian red squirrel, who was mixing it up with a couple of jackdaws, and whom we also first saw in Slovenia. (I don’t know why wordpress is rending this image so poorly, compared to the birds before and after it, but if you’d like to see a better copy, just click on it, or this link, to see the original on flickr. Perhaps the issue is the extreme aspect ratio I used to include all of that tail.)
I saw plenty of wood pigeons in South Holland, but this is the first one I saw sitting on a nest. I was tipped off to the location by its mate flying in to deliver a stick.
I could hear three species of tits this morning, long-tailed, blue, and great, but only this great tit would allow a nice picture.
I found a nice pond this morning, and it being summer and all, we should expect damselflies, so here’s a banded demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens), a close relative to the ebony jewelwings we see in Estabrook Park.
Finally, another new face for us belongs to this energetic singer in the reeds at the edge of the pond, our very first great reed warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) and close cousin of the common reed warblers we saw in South Holland.
Given that I crossed a wide river to get to that pond, I’m a little surprised that the only waterfowl I saw this morning were a few mallards on the pond, but two of my buddies reported seeing swans with cygnets on the river, so perhaps I’ll find them tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 