Yeah, the smoke is still here, but the clouds were pretty thin, the temps were mild, and the air was nearly still, so it was an otherwise very nice morning in Estabrook Park.
The pond was pretty busy when I arrived, with two belted kingfishers, the hooded merganser, at least one wood duck, and the green heron, but only the latter let me sneak a nice picture, so here we are.
At the river, I wasn’t too surprised to spot a couple of deer on the far riverbank, but then I noticed that one was a buck, and his rack is looking pretty good so far. It looks like it will be at least an eight pointer.
It was only after I zoomed in on one of the pictures I had taken to see if any were presentable, that I noticed that the second deer, which I initially thought was a doe, also has a set of antlers. So, it was two dudes just chillin’ beside the river, which is a scene I don’t believe I’ve seen before. Usually two bucks will make for a tense moment, but perhaps it is too early in the season for that, or maybe these two are brothers. We may never know.
As I was doing my best to get some decent deer pictures, look who perched just off the tip of the upstream island.
A bit farther upstream, at the boat ramp, I spotted something tiny as it scurried across the gravel, and upon closer inspection, she turns out to be a shore spider (Pardosa milvina), and we can tell she’s a she because she’s carrying her egg sack under her spinneret. In fact, I read that “female shore spiders heavily invest in their offspring, keeping them in egg sacs and carrying them for a few weeks after they are born.“
This image is about at the limit of the “macro” capabilities of my lens, but there is a little more to see if you click on it so you can view the full-resolution in flickr. Particularly, you can see two of the four shiny little eyes she has in her “top row.” When she had had just about enough of me, she scurried straight across the water, without skipping a step, and parked on a clump of aquatic vegetation a couple of yards offshore.
Finally, I didn’t see much for butterflies today, so here’s a nice picture of a red admiral on a purple cone flower by the Benjamin Church house from yesterday, when the butterflies were still plentiful.
Lastly, the crew working to reshape the falls has finally started damming our side of the river temporarily, and I suppose that is so they can see what they will be doing.
Here’s another look from the boardwalk at the base of the stairs down from the beer garden. You can see those same four sacks of gravel a bit upstream on the right. The Cat excavator in the middle appeared to be leveling out the river bottom for the next batch of sacks, which were being loaded onto a Bell B30E articulated dump truck at the same time on the far shore.
Tune in tomorrow to see how far they have gotten and if any other fall migrants have turned up.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 