More oddities from far, far away…

Temps were in the single digits this morning, with a nice breeze out of the west that pushed the “feels like” temperature down into the negative teens. I’d even call that “brisk”, if not necessarily “bad news”. This is the middle of January in Wisconsin, after all. The unambiguous good news, on the other hand, is that the sky was mostly clear, so there was plenty of light to work with, and the water looked a pretty blue instead of the steely gray we’ve been seeing lately.

Since things have been so slow in Estabrook recently, I opted to give it a rest today, and try my luck along the lake shore again, and my first stop was Lake Vista Park in Oak Creek, where rumor had it that a snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) had been spotted just yesterday. I’m sure I glimpsed one once before beside the road on a drive up north, but I’ve never had the opportunity to photograph one before. The dark barring on this one marks it as “female/immature”, and we’re just inside the southern edge of their winter range, so they are merely considered “infrequent” here and not “rare”, but they sure do get folks excited.

This isn’t a portrait, by any means, but a crowd was already gathering at 7:15am, and I didn’t want to be “that guy” or even one of “those guys”, so I took a few shots from across the field, about 200 yards away, and high-tailed it out of there. I’m sure I’ll get a better chance someday, but this will do for now.

From there, I moved north to Grant Park, in hopes of spotting the titmouse that had been reported there yesterday, but I had no luck. Instead, I did find the mute swan reported at the South Shore Yacht Club. I had glimpsed it in the distance on my previous visit, and I hoped to get a picture today, but the bird wasn’t really in a cooperative mood. We’ve seen them in Connecticut and South Holland, of course, but this is my first one in the Milwaukee area.

Finally, I stopped in at Lakeshore State Park, and as I was trying to count the goldeneyes and scaups in the lagoon, one duck was not like the others. That’s because it is our first redhead of the season. Woo hoo, and I sure hope we get to see one in Estabrook Park soon!

I see that the weather tomorrow is supposed to be colder, windier, and cloudier. Brrrr. That’s not the best news ever, but at least it won’t be raining!