Meteorological summer kicked off this morning in Estabrook Park with cloudy skies, mild temps, and nearly still air. I sure could have used a bluer sky, but as a wise man once opined, two out of three ain’t bad.
I had a little time before our 7am meet-up at the beer garden parking lot, so I stopped by the pond, and I’m beginning to hope that we have a nesting pair of green herons there. I’ve been seeing a couple, or more, pretty regularly lately, and here’s one hunting up some breakfast for today.
I don’t believe I took any pictures in the 7 o’clock hour, but after our whole group was assembled at 8am, this mature Cooper’s hawk swooped in as we were making our way to the river. Wouldn’t a bluer sky have been a nice addition?
As is the case with many of the birds in the park, whether they migrate or not, the northern flickers make quite a racket for a few weeks in the spring, but then they go mostly silent after the couples are all sorted out, and nesting season gets under way. This guy didn’t really break the radio silence today, but he did let me have a real nice picture for a change.
When we finally made it to the pond, a pair of green herons were still calling and flitting about, but I was even more thrilled to see our first ducklings there for the year. Hallelujah and congratulations to the new mom! If you count carefully, I believe you can come up with the same twelve fluffy little heads that I did. I didn’t get to see if they emerged from one of the nesting boxes I help Gene install on the island, but we’re already twelve ducklings ahead of where we were last year when those boxes were laying on the ground, so putting them up on posts sure didn’t hurt!
As I was working on a presentable duckling shot, Jenny frantically signaled for me to look up, because that’s where some real action was getting underway. I don’t know if it was on purpose or simply an innocent mistake, but a hawk had entered restricted airspace, and at least three red-winged blackbird males had scrambled to neutralize the threat.
I was too busy trying to keep my lens pointed in the right direction to pay much attention to exactly which hawk it was, but I figured it was probably a Cooper’s hawk, if only because that’s all I’ve been seeing in Estabrook lately. If you look at the picture above, however, after I’ve cleaned it up a bit, you can see that that’s no Cooper’s hawk.
Even better, the red-winged blackbirds enticed it to show us the top side, as well, and with that evidence, my sources inform me that this is a broad-winged hawk, which we’ve only seen once before just last summer. “Welcome back, Sweetie, and watch out for the red-winged blackbirds!”
Finally, just as I was approaching the Oak Leaf Trail to exit the park and go have something to eat, I spotted this guy already enjoying his own breakfast of dandelion seeds. I read that the brown patches suggest a first-year male.
Tomorrow is forecast to repeat much of this morning, but without the clouds, so I look forward to a chance for some even prettier pictures, and we’ll see if I can deliver on that soon enough.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 