It appears that some of the Canadian wildfire smoke is back, or there is enough of it in the sky east of here, but either way, it turned the sunrise over Lake Michigan into a dim fireball this morning.
Happily, the birds didn’t notice or didn’t care, because there were plenty to see this morning, despite the weekend crowd of park goers, even at 6 a.m., and here’s one of several northern house wrens singing in the morning over the dunes behind the beach.
It took me a second to recognize this little cutie, a young or female American redstart, because I haven’t seen one since this past spring when they migrated through Estabrook.
This one was even trickier, a pine warbler, because I only got my first (bad) picture of one in Estabrook also just this past spring.
This beauty, however, I had no trouble identifying, because there’s nothing else like a red-breasted nuthatch around here.
On my way back to our campsite from the cordwalk through the Kohler Dunes State Natural Area, I stopped by the marsh along the Black River again, and perhaps because it was a chilly morning, with temps in the mid 50s, the painted turtles were up trying to catch some sun like I’ve never seen them before.
There were about a dozen American white pelicans on the river, as seems to be the norm these days, and I couldn’t believe my luck when they suddenly synchronized their fishing operations, and I was able to catch them all lined up like this.
The biggest treat for me at the Black River was getting this nice portrait of a muskrat swimming through the duckweed.
Finally, it would hardly seem like a visit to the Black River marsh if I didn’t come away with a marsh wren picture, so here we are.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be back in Estabrook Park, and so will the Milwaukee Birders, so if Monday mornings haven’t worked out for you, come on out and join them at 8:00 a.m. in the Beer Garden parking lot, and we’ll see if anyone new has shown up while I’ve been away.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 