A threesome!

The weather in Estabrook Park this morning was as nice as forecast, so I had enough daylight for a quick scan of the place before meeting the wildlife walkers at 8. Things were as quiet as usual, lately, until I got passed what is left of the falls. I happened to glance over at the workspace they had cleared to facilitate the reshaping, and that they are now replanting with native trees and bushes, and I noticed a large dog sniffing around. Well, it turns out that that is no dog! Instead, it is the first coyote I’ve seen in the park since January. I immediately crouched down behind the bit of a stone wall on our riverbank and started taking pictures.

Even better, she was soon joined by two larger and darker coyotes, which were probably males. One gave a couple of tugs to the anti-erosion netting they are putting down, but it wouldn’t budge. I’m sure they saw me, but they went about their business seemingly unperturbed, and they eventually continued their hunt downstream along the Westabrook trail. I’ve had the good fortune of seeing two before, but this is my first encounter with three at once, and what an absolute treat it was.

Then it was time to go meet the walkers, and we had two nature lovers again today. We visited the pond first, but it must have been still too early, and things were very quiet, so we headed to the river. The coyotes were long gone, of course, but Lisa scrounged up a pair of late-season killdeer for us. Here’s my best shot, almost straight towards the sun, of the two of them.

One was kind enough to move to my left for a nicer shot.

By the time we got back to the pond, the bushes on the island were full of house finches with a few house sparrows and goldfinches mixed in, but the main attraction, especially for Jannik, who was visiting all the way from Munich, was this female belted kingfisher. I’m sure she was as annoyed as ever to have any audience at all, but she sure put on one heck of a show for Jannik anyway.

Finally, 10 am rolled around, we had seen 23 bird species, and we all said our goodbyes, or auf wiedersehens, as the case may be. I turned to head towards home, but after a few steps, I paused for one more look around, and there was a bird perched at the very top of the tall tree at the northwest corner of the pond. It was too big to be a finch or sparrow, and the wrong color to be a robin or dove, and that’s because it was an American kestrel, our one and only raptor of the day. Hurray! Species number 24.

The forecast for tomorrow looks quite wet, so the viewing might not be too great, but if I see anything, I’ll let you know.