As promised, I did ride the Oak Leaf Trail down to Lakeshore State Park this morning, and in short order, I found this handsome devil paddling slowly in the quiet water basin. He’s a greater scaup in eclipse plumage, and we last saw one in Estabrook back in February. “Great job complying with the ‘slow-no-wake rules’, Buddy!”
Then the rest of the Milwaukee Birders arrived, and we saw a handful of young brown-headed cowbirds, who have become scarce in Estabrook lately.
There were about a dozen young or female purple martins, perching on their house to preen and rest, and one male who wouldn’t look my way, the little stinker.
The funnest sight, for me at least, was the dozens of barn swallows hunting bugs high and low over the open fields. One youngster even posed on a rock for a minute so I could get a nice picture.
On my way back home, I stopped by Juneau Lagoon, and I found even more barn swallows. Here’s another youngster, hoping to be fed, but I believe it will be disappointed because the approaching bird does not have the long outer tail feathers of an adult.
Instead, here is an adult with the characteristic forked tail, but not too forked, so probably a female, and she’s got her face buried nearly to her eyeball in one lucky fledgling’s mouth to deliver a meal. The other two will just have to wait their turns.
Sorry about the resolution of the image above. I couldn’t tell which bird would be fed next, so I had the aperture pretty small to deepen the depth of field and have them all mostly in focus. Plus, I had the shutter pretty fast to reduce motion blur. Thus, not a whole lot of light was able to reach the sensor, the ISO went through the roof to compensate, and in a digital camera that introduces a lot of noise to the image.
Finally, back before I left the state park, I found this gorgeous black swallowtail sipping nectar from a hyssop blossom.
I see that we’re due for a slight change in the weather, temps are forecast to be only in the high 60s tomorrow morning with a dew point in the low 60s, and it should be quite comfortable for our weekly wildlife walk in Estabrook Park. Sunrise is forecast to be 6:00, on the dot, so that should still leave me plenty of time to reach the beer garden parking lot by 7am. If that’s too early for you, I’ll swing back by again at 8. Come on out and let’s see if the night heron is still there, the egret has returned, or some new shorebird has arrived.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 
