It was a nice morning in Estabrook Park, and things are starting to look a little closer to normal at the river. The sand bags placed to allow work on our side of the falls are just starting to poke through the water, and it is now possible to walk along the river trail from the falls to the north end while only getting muddy but not wet, and the mud isn’t deep, just slippery.
As I was carefully making my way north along that river path, I finally captured this image, such as it is, of a northern waterthrush on its way back south.
At the north end, at least one belted kingfisher is back to catching fish out of the river.
At the flowers behind the dog park, I finally got a picture of a red admiral. In previous years, they have been one of the most plentiful butterflies in the park, but they have been oddly scarce this year.
There were the usual three or four red-spotted purples and four or five hackberry emperors, but here’s one of several silver-spotted skippers that I’ve been ignoring.
At the pollinator garden, I was happy to see that at least one pearl crescent has arrived.
The main attraction, however, has got to be this male black swallowtail, quite possibly the same one that we saw on Wednesday.
With all the competition lately, the monarchs have had to up their game, and this one did just that.
Finally, at the weeds beside the southern soccer fields, this critter gave me a bit of cognitive dissonance as it clearly looked like a moth, but it also scampered around the blossoms in broad daylight like a butterfly.
It would even pause on a blossom, as though it were feeding, but I could never spot a proboscis, so I don’t know how it was getting any nectar. Anyway, it turns out to be our very first corn earworm moth (Helicoverpa zea), and I read that “the larvae … [are] a major agricultural pest. Since it feeds on many different plants [it] has been given many different common names, including the cotton bollworm and the tomato fruitworm.”
Lastly, the goldfinch are starting to pick apart the pods of thistle seeds.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 
Hello Andrew, Sorry to bother you while visiting your family, but here I am…doing it I’d like to know how to contact people in the Friends group. We have a small garden group here at The Oaks and could use some advice on how to deal with a ‘young’ tree. It may become “in the way” in time…but we’d like to have some advice of saving it and working around it, or digging it out now…It’s about 5-6 ft high. Thanks. -Lorraine
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Lorraine,
Harold Schmidt is the man you want, and I’ll email you his contact information directly.
Andy
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