Are they green, or are they blue?

As I suggested yesterday, I did ride down to Lakeshore State Park this morning to join the Milwaukee Birders again. There was a stiff breeze coming off the lake, so thank goodness temps were milder than they’ve been recently.

When I spotted this little cutie, I got all excited because the white-ish bib and collar looked a bit exotic. My excitement was premature, however, because this is just a young white-crowned sparrow, of which we’ve been seeing plenty lately.

Another familiar face, which will soon be gone for the winter, is this northern flicker foraging for bugs in the nooks and crannies of the rocks at the water’s edge.

Someone who we don’t get to see much of in Estabrook, and who was at Lakeshore the last time I visited, is this savannah sparrow.

Similarly, there was one American coot foraging with the mallards, and we last saw one in Estabrook back in April.

The big treat of the day was this small group of female and/or immature male green-winged teals. They do visit Estabrook from time to time, but not as frequently as coots, and our last visitor was back in March.

One interesting new detail, at least for me, is that their green speculum feathers can appear blue if the light hits them right. This caused me a little confusion this morning, and I even wondered if they might be blue-winged teals instead, until I found this duck who was kind enough to demonstrate the effect by simply turning toward me just a bit. “Thanks!” You can even see the feather on the duck behind it and to the left still looks green. Wild!

For comparison, here are two of the diminutive teals, “the smallest dabbling duck in North America,” with four mallards, a drake and three hens, that are nearly twice the size. Also, note how the mallards’ blue wing stripe is always bounded by white, while the teals is not.

We did hear a few pipits as they flew over, and we did look up in time to see them go, but we never did see them land, so I wasn’t able to get a picture for you this time.

On my way home, I was just in time to watch this Cooper’s hawk try for a squirrel and come up empty. It hopped around for a bit trying to convince the squirrel to come out of that tree “just for a second”, but the squirrel was having none of that, and the hawk soon flew off to try again elsewhere.

Finally, I am sorry to report that I will have to miss the wildlife walk in Estabrook Park tomorrow morning, but I understand that it continued just fine without me while I was away before, so come on out if you’re able. Sunrise is now after 7am, which will probably put a damper on the 7am start, so I recommend giving the sun time to rise and reverting to the original 8am start time. Obviously, if some diehards want to start at 7am anyway, I won’t be there to stop them.