Sorry about the radio silence lately. An odd confluence of events and conditions out here have really put a damper on my picture taking this week, but I finally had some luck this morning.
Besides the American crows and blue jays we see in Estabrook, I see two more corvids regularly out here. This first one is a common raven that I photographed while I was standing on the front steps of my folks’ house, and I’m a little surprised to see them here but can find no report of one ever being spotted in Milwaukee County. They seem simply not interested in a big swath of the south and central US, so I might never get to see one of these magnificent beaks back home. Darn.
The other corvid I see out here is the fish crow (Corvus ossifragus), which is slightly smaller than the American crow and whose range hugs the east coast and extends up some river valleys, almost a mirror image of the ravens’, but with some gaps, as in Milwaukee, and some overlaps, such as right here. Since they look so much like American crows, the best way for me to ID them is by their caw, which I find a lot easier to distinguish. Here’s one on a utility wire with some morsel it just found.
Here, a second one has joined it to ask for a piece.
And here they both are checking out how it tastes.
Speaking of morsels, here’s a young-looking green heron, still sporting its spots, with a small frog it caught but that it doesn’t seem to know what to do with now.
Here’s one of the latest in the long line of invasive species we’ve managed to bring to our shores, a spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula), on my folks’ front lawn. It appears that they haven’t yet reached Milwaukee, but I suspect, as with the emerald ash borer before it, that is simply a matter of time.
Finally, we’ve been to a couple of cemeteries this week to visit family graves, and I was pleasantly surprised to find both places full of eastern bluebirds. It appears that they like to perch on headstones to watch for bugs in the lawn onto which they can pounce. If only they knew, they might consider themselves lucky that they got named after their striking color and not after where people spot them, as the chimney swifts and barn owls have.
The weather is supposed to be nice this weekend, and my sister has off of work, so I have a hope that we’ll get to visit someplace interesting to see who lives there. Wish me luck!
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 
