Autumn really starts to settle in…

It was cold, windy, cloudy, and even sprinkley this morning in Estabrook Park, so a classic autumn day in southeast Wisconsin.

There were still a few sights to see, despite the weather, but I didn’t see a picture I could take until I was beside the river at the north end. That’s when the doe …

and her not-so-young-anymore fawn came out to graze. His “antlers” haven’t changed much, if any, since we saw them last, so perhaps this is as big as they are going to get this year. “You’ll get bigger ones next year, Tiger!”

I did see the osprey again, plus a red-tailed and Cooper’s hawk, but the pictures weren’t great with white-sky backgrounds, so here’s a darling hermit thrush who was kind enough to pose on a nice, mossy log.

Swamp sparrows are now a common sight, if far less common than the ubiquitous white-throated sparrows and dark-eyed juncos, and here’s one eyeing me up before resuming its foraging.

Since I’ve got some room left, here’s a female red-bellied woodpecker, from yesterday when the sun was out and the sky was blue, repeatedly harvesting hackberries beside the southern playground, probably to add them to her stash somewhere nearby.

Here’s a yellow-rumped warbler, also from yesterday, who was probably having better luck hunting for bugs than it did today.

Finally, I didn’t see a butterfly or dragonfly today, but here’s another red admiral from yesterday.

Lastly, if you were wondering if they were going to leave the new Mount Estabrook on the far shore, perhaps as a sledding hill, well here’s your answer. They were loading up a couple of large, street-legal dump trucks to haul it away, so no new sledding hill for you.