The wildfire smoke didn’t clear out overnight as much as I had hoped, but the air quality index was back down into the 300s by sunrise this morning, and it was light enough to venture out about 15 minutes earlier than yesterday, so that’s some progress anyway.
My reward for those extra 15 minutes was arriving at the underpass just in time to catch this worried-looking little masked bandit hoping to emerge from the storm drain. I took a couple of quick shots and then got out of its way.
There are still rough-winged swallow fledglings crying to be fed in the trees on and around the upstream island, and this youngster really let me have a nice portrait while it waited for its food to arrive.
The song sparrows have been singing all summer but have mostly been keeping out of sight lately, so it was a treat to catch one out in the open for a change. Perhaps this is also a fledgling who was more interested in when the next morsel will be delivered than it was worried about me.
The big surprise of the day, however, was seeing a pectoral sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) in Estabrook Park for only the second time ever, and managing to get a picture of the well-camouflaged little sweet pea this time. It’s traveling from the far northern reaches of Canada all the way to South America, so here’s a hearty “Welcome to Estabrook, Darling! Stay a minute, if you can.”
When I arrived, it was just foraging a little, preening a little, and generally hanging out on the exposed river bottom between the islands along with the solitary sandpiper, a couple of spotted sandpipers, and a trio of killdeer. That patch of mud and rocks is really turning into quite the shorebird rest stop. Outstanding!
The butterflies were staying out of sight today, but the widow skimmer dragonflies were patrolling the weed patch beside the soccer fields as usual, and here’s a female posing nicely.
Finally, if you squint real good, you can just make out the white crescent on the hind wing of this backlight butterfly photo from Wednesday, which makes it our first eastern comma of the year. I did try to sneak around to the other side for a nicer picture, but the trail was narrow there, so I didn’t have any luck with that. Next time!
We’re forecast to have a good breeze out of the west tomorrow morning, so maybe we’ll get a break from the smoke. Time’ll tell.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 