One more returnee and many more to go…

The rain and wind did arrive, but the rain moved out by sunrise, and we didn’t get any of the snow that was threatened, so it wasn’t too bad a morning to go looking for wildlife in Estabrook Park.

The river ice is really starting to disappear, and the geese, mallards, and common mergansers are making the best of all the newly open water, but the exciting return of the day was this male belted kingfisher staking out his territory around the upstream island. I glimpsed one in January, before the river froze over, but I haven’t gotten a picture of one for you since early December. “Welcome back, Buddy, and let’s all hope for a better picture soon, eh?”

That’s it for pictures today, I’m sad to say, but you’ll be thrilled to know that we still haven’t yet exhausted the supply of pictures from Nicaragua, and this first one is a familiar face that we can hope to see in Estabrook in April: a Baltimore oriole.

Similarly, here’s an orchard oriole, which we do get to see in Estabrook but much less often, and I once thought was “the other” oriole.

This shy bird, which I found lurking in the shadows over that little river in Granada, had the pointy beak and orange color of an oriole, but the black eye mask and long black beard do not look familiar.

Thankfully, he was kind enough to turn around to show us, not only the white streaks on his black wings, but also the orange streaks on his black back, and that makes him an aptly-named streak-backed oriole (Icterus pustulatus), a first for me.

Here he is in partial profile so we can see the eye mask, beard, and back streaks all together. Sadly, they are primarily Central American birds and are “very rare in [even] the southwestern U.S.,” so our chances of seeing them in Estabrook any time soon are “slim to none,” as the experts say. In any case, you may be just as stunned to learn as I was that there are thirty-two (32!) species in the Icterus genus, the new world orioles. Good heavens, it’s gonna take some work to collect them all. Right?

Finally, every morning in Granada, when Deb and I would go up onto the roof-top patio to check for birds enjoying the bougainvillea growing in the neighbors courtyard, we would see blue-gray tanagers. I first saw them in Brazil, but this may have been Deb’s first exposure, and she was quite taken with them. This particular individual was taking a break from the bougainvillea, which you can see in the orchard oriole picture above, and was chillin’ instead on some nearby rebar sticking out the top of some structure, which is a common sight in Latin America.

I see that it is supposed to cool off further by tomorrow morning, but the wind is supposed to back down, and the sun might even peek through the clouds a bit, so it should be a pretty good mid-February morning in Estabrook Park. I can’t wait to see who shows up next!