Winter gives us a taste of things to come…

It was cloudy, cold, and windy this morning at Lakeshore State Park, but at least the snow had stopped by sunrise. I don’t know which shock did it, or if it was the combination, but most of the birds were in hiding, and we only counted 7 species.

Happily, one of those species was the bald eagle, and here’s one of a pair that soared high over the water. (And, as you will soon see, we’re still not out of the woods with this whole image handling thing, so I feel compelled to use both methods until I do get it sorted. I know some of you will see two normal images, some of you will see one normal and one stretched, and some of you will see just one image plus a link you can click on to view it in Flickr, but at least all of you should see at least one good image, and I don’t yet have a better solution. Sorry about that. If you see something other than one of these three scenarios, please let me know.)

Another of those few species we did see this morning was a swan, but they were flying too high for my gear to enable detecting if they were tundra or trumpeter swans. Either way, they’re the first swans I’ve seen of the fall migration.

It wasn’t until I made my way north along the lake that I spotted a couple of small bufflehead flocks diving for their breakfasts, more firsts of the season, and the ones at the Shorewood Nature Preserve let me get closer. I sure hope a few of these little cuties visit us on the Milwaukee River in Estabrook this winter.

As usual, it seems, lately, I have plenty of room to include a few more pictures from our recent trip, and there are still a lot of them left, so let’s get to it. Here’s one of a pair of striking northern jacanas (Jacana spinosa), cousins to the wattled jacanas we saw in Brazil, that we saw back in Flores, Guatemala before we visited Tikal.

Once we got to Tikal, this gorgeous bat falcon (Falco rufigularis) perched right over the parking area just outside our hotel.

Finally, we heard howler monkeys overnight, but we didn’t get to see them, Yucatán Black Howler Monkeys (Alouatta pigra), until we visited the Tikal archeological site the next morning.

Lastly, another butterfly on the side of the Great Pyramid was this dainty Theona checkerspot (Chlosyne theona).

The forecast for tomorrow morning is COLD, to say the least, but at least the sun should be out, so that might help. Sunrise is back before 7am, these days, but at this time of year, it sure takes its sweet time climbing into the sky. Thus, I will look for wildlife walkers in the beer garden parking lot, but I’m gonna hold off until 8am. You are welcome to start earlier if you want, and I’ll see you at 8.