A cloudy day at Kohler-Andrae…

The rain overnight was nowhere near as bad as we feared, and it was all done by morning, so yay! The clouds, however, have been thick all day, so I didn’t have a lot of light to work with, but I did the best I could.

I did see a doe with her fawn, but they were halfway into the tall grass by the time I spotted them, and they kept moving. This young buck, on the other hand, stood his ground. In fact, he stamped it and snorted a couple of times, so I took the picture of him that he clearly wanted me to.

If you’ve ever wondered where the cedar waxwings go when they flee your sight, as I do, well I found a good candidate spot today. I counted at least 36 scattered in the branches of a tall dead tree and in the bushes full of berries below.

In addition to chipping, field, and swamp sparrows, there were a couple of clay-colored sparrows making their unusual call, and this one let me have what is probably my nicest clay-colored sparrow portrait so far.

You will probably recognize this bird as a wild turkey, but you might not notice that it’s still a youngster, even though it already has its signature blue bald head. It sure took me a while, but I eventually noticed that it and its two siblings were only about half the size of the two hens with them. You can just see a bit of one of the hens in the upper right corner of the picture.

Now that you’ve got turkeys on your mind, you’ll probably have no problem recognizing this as an even younger turkey poult, even if its head is still covered in short, tan feathers.

Finally, we see plenty of eastern chipmunks in Estabrook, but how could I resist this picture?

Lastly, it appears that the clouds are forecast to linger into tomorrow morning, but the wind is supposed to stay light, so at least the hearing should be good.