Well, the rain is back, but at least it held off until the end of our wildlife walk this morning, so that’s something. We had a good turnout today, with four 7-am-ers, and five 8-am-ers. Our first stop was the pond, but we didn’t see much, so we headed for the river in search of the oriole I showed you yesterday. Before we could get across the softball field, however, Karen spotted the first red-headed woodpecker I’ve seen since September 2025. Outstanding!
It flushed across the river as we approached the edge of the bluff, and we hadn’t seen the oriole yet, so we took stairway seven down to the river path in hopes of better luck. There, another bird bolted but didn’t go far, and I was halfway through explaining how the white checks on its black back made it a towhee, before I got my binoculars on it to see clearly that it is instead our first rose-breasted grosbeak of the year. Hot dang! Now we’re cookin’!
We did find the red-head again, and there turned out to be two of them, but the crowd also spotted this handsome kingfisher and patiently coached me through where it was perched. “Thanks, team!”
In all the excitement, I can’t recall if we did see the oriole in the first hour, but when I went back to the parking lot to greet the 8-am squad, there it was, perched right over the path from the parking lot to the beer garden. This is still far from a portrait, but I think we can all agree that it’s a big improvement over yesterday’s image.
As we headed upstream to connect with the first group, Peggy alerted me to this great blue heron perched high over the first island. They still don’t seem very comfortable in the park, but it’s still early, and we have all summer.
After that, the pictures mostly dried up. We did see the sandpiper at the river, and Dan did get eyes on the catbird I had heard earlier, another first for the year, but it dove for cover before I could catch a glimpse. Perhaps it, and the rest of the critters, could feel the coming rain and had the good sense to hunker down. The silver lining is that this leaves room for the pretty northern flicker I saw yesterday, when the sky was blue.
Finally, after the beaver scolded me for being by the river yesterday, it continued up stream along the far riverbank anyway.
The front that’s passing through today should be mostly gone by tomorrow morning, so conditions should be back to about what we had today, and maybe I’ll have as much good luck.
In other news, in case you’ve been wanting to question my shutter-speed choices in front of a live audience, this could be your big chance. I’ve got two presentations coming up later this week, both in the Shorewood Village Center, in the lower level of the Shorewood Public Library, first on Wednesday, April 29 at 6:30 pm and again on Thursday, April 30 at 2:00.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 