A little less wet, and a little less birdy…

It was another dark and wet morning in Estabrook Park, but not as wet as yesterday. I didn’t see as much wildlife, however, and I didn’t get my first picture until I was on my way downstream and already below the falls, where I found this green heron fishing on the far riverbank. As I was lining up the best shot I thought I could manage, given the lack of light coming through the clouds, the little angler caught this delicious looking fish.

The next fun sight is this Pink-legged Tiger Moth (Spilosoma latipennis). We’ve seen Virginia tiger moths before, and I thought the little bit of reddish color might be a piece of some flower that got stuck there, but nope. That’s its namesake pink leg.

Many of you will recognize this hungry little muncher, a monarch caterpillar. I’ve seen the butterflies a few times, and they obviously have time to perch on milkweed plants, but none has posed for me yet this year.

And that’s it for Estabrook pictures today, which is just the break I needed to work on my stockpile of pictures from Namibia.

These are ostriches, of course, specifically common ostriches (Struthio camelus) and “the largest living species of bird.” We spotted this small herd soon after we entered Etosha National Park for the first time.

This next picture may not look like much, until you realize that the huge clump of straw hanging down from the top is just part of an enormous communal nest for sociable weavers (Philetairus socius), and that’s one of them flying straight up into it. The wikipedia article about them gushes that “these nests are perhaps the most spectacular structure built by any bird,” and it even cites a source, so you know that’s gotta be true!

Here’s a closer look at one of the striking and industrious little weavers. The article explains further that “these nests are amongst the largest built by any bird, and they are large enough to house over 100 pairs.” Wild, eh? Who would have thought that the largest bird and the largest bird nests could be found in the same park, but the latter is not built by the former?

Finally, the most common ungulate we saw on the whole trip has got to be the springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis). Not only did we see them in Pilanesberg and Etosha, but there were little herds out in the middle of nowhere all over Namibia, which was great to see. They are supposed to pronk, as I’ve seen pronghorns in North America do, but we didn’t get to see them do it on this trip. Next time!

Lastly, despite the wet morning, the forecast looks pretty good for this afternoon (less than 20% chance of rain), which is good news for the Friends of Estabrook Park picnic (5:00-7:30 in the beer garden), so if you’ve always wanted to question me in person on my editorial decisions, this could be your big chance.