Back along the Milwaukee River again…

After the run of beautiful weather I had out east, it took me a minute to adjust to the rainy and breezy morning that greeted me here in Estabrook Park today. I also hadn’t needed insect repellent in two weeks, and I had a hope that some of you would have been feeding the mosquitoes here while I was away, but based on their ravenous appetites this morning, it seems you let them go hungry until my return. Alas.

Anyway, I was also greeted by a few critters of the avian kind, and here they are. This first one is a female belted kingfisher, of course, and the mix of red and blue in her upper band suggests that she’s a youngster. Her youth may also explain her slightly unusual willingness to perch for this portrait in the tree on the island closest to the park bench.

Sure, the sky was pretty dark, so the ISO setting on my camera had to be pretty high to capture this image, which makes it a bit noisy, but I think it came out nicer than WordPress is rendering it, and you might like the original on flickr better.

Anyway, this next picture really is as bad as it looks, but we seldom get to see red-breasted nuthatches as they migrate through, and this is my first one of the fall migration, so here we are.

Another migrant, and first of the fall, who let me capture an image as it passes through was this darling Swainson’s thrush, looking to see what’s on the breakfast buffet.

Finally, the only other bird I managed to photograph between the rain drops this morning, was this mature Cooper’s hawk perched over the island in the pond. I saw it high in a tree on the far side when I walked up for my second visit, and as I tried to line up a shot, a second hawk, perhaps a sibling or a parent, swooped in and caused it to move closer and lower. Thanks!

Lastly, the river is mostly receded to its pre-flood level, and the crew is back to working on reshaping the falls. I’m not sure what that new row of bags in the foreground is for, but I could see that some stone from the river bottom has already been moved around.

I see that temps are forecast to be in the high 40s tomorrow morning, but the sky is supposed to be clear, and the breeze not too strong, so maybe we’ll get to see some of the warblers that should also be passing through.