The forecast lake effect snow held off till after 9am today, and the weather was otherwise relatively mild, compared to what we’ve been enjoying lately, so it was a pleasant morning in Estabrook Park. The critters, on the other hand, seemed to act as though heavy snow was imminent, and I only had one decent photo opportunity. The good news is that the bufflehead drake is back in one of the slivers of open water on the river, and he was the one who allowed me to sneak a nice picture.
Every variety we’ve seen lately of the goldeneyes was there, the adult male, the young male, the female with an orange tip, and the female without, but none were as accommodating as the bufflehead, so here’s a picture from yesterday.
Similarly with the common mergansers, I saw a couple of males and a few females, but I have to resort to this picture which I also got yesterday.
Finally, as far as Estabrook Park is concerned, the robins were pretty thick again this morning, after being absent for a while this month, but I had this nice picture from yesterday of one taking sips of river water when the sun was out, so I left them alone today.
Now, back to Portage for a moment. At one point, as we were scanning the fields for prairie-chickens, three raptors put on quite an aerial show, and two of them were pretty clearly rough-legged hawks, the one at the top and the one on the right in this picture, but the third one was a mystery. Candidates included a “dark-morph” rough-legged, but it is clearly bigger than the other two, which wouldn’t be the case with a simple color morph; a common raven, which we did hear a couple of times, but they also are not this big, and they have a different tail shape; a “dark-morph” red-tailed hawk, which do exist, but they still have plenty of light feathers in their wings. So, who could it be?
Happily, as the morning wore on, we had other opportunities to catch glimpses of the mysterious dark bird, and I got better pictures. When I checked with our AI over lords the next day, they suggested an eagle! Even better, young bald eagles, which are also dark, are generally mottled instead of having the light and dark wing pattern you can just make out in this image. Thus, this appears to be our first golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), instead, subject to confirmation by the experts, of course, but they did accept a golden eagle observation just a month ago. Keep your fingers crossed!
Finally, after a fine lunch at the Plover Cafe, in Plover, WI, we took a quick swing through the fantastic Schmeeckle Reserve “on the campus of UW-Stevens Point”, in hopes of seeing the pileated woodpecker that has been spotted there recently, but we had no luck with that, and the nicest sight I saw was this deer lounging in the sun.
Lastly, if you’ve been wondering when Anne was going to whisk me away on another fabulous adventure, well, tomorrow is that day. I won’t have time to stop in Estabrook before we go, so I’ll post something from the archives to wet your whistle while we travel, but I hope to have new content as early as Sunday. Wish me luck!
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 