It has dried out now, but it was plenty rainy and breezy early this morning, so I didn’t get into Estabrook Park for a while. Instead I used that extra time to write this up and use a few more pictures from yesterday.
At first glance, this looks like just another picture of a red-breasted merganser drake on the river, and it is not even as nice as the one I got on the pond later that morning, but if you look closer (click on the image to view it in flicker), you can see that the “fish” in its beak has a hind leg, which makes it our first tadpole of the year. Woo hoo, but before we get too excited, I’ve just learned that bullfrog tadpoles can winter over under the ice, so this is most likely not from eggs laid already this year. In any case, I’m still glad to see it, as I also expect was the merganser.
While we’re at the river, here’s a look at the horned grebe before it went for a nap with the pied-billed grebe.
And here’s the pied-billed grebe, also before naptime.
Once the towhee started belting out his tune, I tried to move for a better sideview, but the branch it was perched on didn’t make that easy. Oh well. He’s still a pretty bird.
Along with all the ruby-crowned kinglets and white-throated sparrows I saw yesterday, there was also a smaller influx of swamp sparrows, and here’s one of the little cuties foraging at a flooded low spot beside the river.
Finally, I happened to be out on my bike with my camera yesterday afternoon, so I stopped by the owl on her nest that I showed you last week, and it appears that a lot has happened since then!
The forecast for tomorrow morning looks just as wet, but who knows, maybe there will be a nice big gap in the rain like the one I had in Dallas Sunday morning.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 