The show picks up steam!

The weather was indeed as nice as forecast, and it was a fabulous morning in Estabrook Park.

If you’ve been wondering, as I sure have, whatever happened to the doe and fawn that we saw on and around the upstream island before the flood, well, wonder no more because it appears that they survived just fine. Here they are right beside the beer garden parking lot sampling some grape leaves.

The open parking lot was between us, so I couldn’t very well sneak up on them, but here’s a slightly closer look at the fawn. If you zoom in, and I hope you do, you can see that it has amassed quite a collection of burs in its fur, poor kid.

Anyway, the trees were full of warblers, as I had hoped, once the sun had a chance to warm things up a bit, and here’s our first black-throated green of the season.

We’ve seen northern waterthrushes already, and way back before I went to Connecticut, but none have allowed me to take a close up like this so far this fall.

This Tennessee warbler, another first of the season for us, really knew how to work with me. First it rustled around a bit lower in the tree, to capture my attention. Then it slowly worked its way to the top, which gave me time to get my focus and exposure settings in order. Finally, it emerged into the warm morning light at the top of the tree with a perfect blue background. Lastly, it hopped around up there a bit to give me a few different shots of a few different poses. I couldn’t ask for a better subject. “Thanks, Sweetie!”

Meanwhile, this little stinker, an adult male American redstart, kept to shadows nearly as dark as its feathers and only gave me two shots. How this one somehow came out in focus, I’ll never know.

There are still plenty of eastern wood-pewees around, but this dashing great crested flycatcher, of whom we haven’t seen nor heard much in a while, flew in to give the pewees, and you, a break.

Another notorious lurker is the Wilson’s warbler, and this rascal, yet another first of the season, was no exception.

Finally, this cutie, who posed only slightly better than the Wilson’s, has me puzzled. I didn’t get much of a better look at it than this, and “a yellow warbler with a black patch low on its breast” doesn’t garner a lot of matches. The yellow isn’t stripey, as it is on Canada and magnolia warblers, so I’m gonna try “mourning warbler” because they do have a big black bib on their chest, and pictures of young or molting males suggest that its possible for one to wind up looking like this, at least for a while. Plus, my other picture shows that it has an eye ring and no wing bars, which also fit. We’ll see what the experts say soon enough.

Lastly, I did see one dragonfly and one butterfly, but neither one had time for a picture today, so here’s a bare blossom, the first New England aster I’ve seen this year.

The forecast for tomorrow calls for more of the same, but even less breeze, if you can believe it, which should provide ideal conditions for our weekly wildlife walk in the morning. I have received word that “there’s a bunch of [folks who] are all thinking about getting [to the beer garden] around seven,” so that appears to be when we will be starting. If that’s too early for you, I’ll swing back by the parking lot at 8, and you can join us then. See you there!