Brrrr! It was a tad brisk this morning in Estabrook Park. Happily, the forecast lake effect snow stayed south of us, the wind didn’t feel nearly as strong as I feared, and the sky was crystal clear.
It was cold enough, for the first time this season, to freeze small puddles solid and form ice on the pond and some parts of the river. Here’s a reflection off the river of the sun coming over the bluff, and you can see open water in the bottom half but a skin of large ice crystals in the upper half.
The hardy birds were up and at ’em nevertheless, and here’s a hermit thrush beside the river with what appears to be a tiny bit of ice on the tip of its bill.
We even had a few straggler fall migrants, and here’s a yellow-rumped warbler foraging on the exposed river bottom.
I stopped by the beer garden parking lot at 8am, as promised, and two warmly dressed nature enthusiasts were there to join me on our weekly wildlife walk. We headed to the pond first and counted a couple dozen house finches in the bushes on the island, in hopes of finding a stray redpoll, but we had no luck with that. Meanwhile, the red-bellied woodpeckers, which had been oddly quiet since my return, finally showed themselves, and here’s one taking advantage of that clear, blue sky.
As we circled around the back side of the pond, at least one, and possibly two, Cooper’s hawks flew in, and this is the one that stopped to see what was on the menu.
The next surprisingly late fall migrant, a killdeer, was also foraging on the expose river bottom at the north end.
Finally, we might get lucky and have one or two more days warm enough for the insects to come out before winter settles in for good, but today was not one of those days. Thus, it is high time we transition to season-appropriate imagery, such as this female cardinal by the pond, doing her very best puffbird impersonation.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 