Another dry day in May…

The nice weather continued this morning in Estabrook Park, although the breeze did pick back up a bit, but not so much that I couldn’t hear the birds singing. There are still a few warblers hanging around, but none wanted to be in the pictures today.

Instead, the red-breasted merganser was still out in the open on the river, and appears to have moved on from the washing phase to the drying phase. I hope he gets things sorted out soon so he can catch up to his compadres.

Here’s a little cutie we don’t get to see in Estabrook Park too often, a chipping sparrow, who, despite chipping his heart out, took me nearly as long to get eyes on as the cerulean warbler.

Another sign that summer can’t be too far off was this bullfrog in the river keeping an eye on me as I lined up this shot.

I did see a couple batches of goslings this morning, but this picture from Thursday came out better, and I’d say they’re starting to look like tweens.

There were also a couple of spotted sandpipers flitting about, now that the river is nice and low, but I couldn’t beat this picture from Tuesday.

When I got back from Namibia, I caught just the tail end of the annual toad mating frenzy on the river, but I didn’t get any pictures, and this toad I saw on Thursday seemed kinda tired and might have been just hopping away from that happy event.

Finally, I took this picture with my phone, but I clearly didn’t check the result closely enough to see if it had focused on the right subject, because it sure seemed more interested in my dirty finger than the pretty dragonfly perched on it, our very first Common Baskettail (Epitheca cynosura). The rule is, however, that I can’t list it in our index of species pictured in the park until I include it in a post, and who knows if or when I’ll ever see one again, so here we are.

The winds are supposed to back off a bit while the clouds thicken up a bit for tomorrow morning, but there is still no rain in the forecast, so it appears that this month will go down in the history books as our driest May yet. I wonder who will show up to usher it out the door.