It was raining pretty good when the sun supposedly came up, and it kept on raining through most of the morning. Happily, it didn’t rain all day, so I was able to get into Estabrook after lunch, and this is who I found that late in the day.
I didn’t see a single bird on the pond, during my first visit, and I wasn’t too surprised by the absence of the mergansers and the grebe, but this might be the first time I haven’t seen a wood duck on the pond in months. Maybe they decided not to wait until November this year to get out of town.
So, I hiked over to the river, which proved more fruitful. Besides the mallards and a couple of great blue herons, we had a double-crested cormorant visiting again.
The bigger treat, for me at least, was finally catching the great egret while it still had a fish in its bill. I don’t think I’ve seen one with a big fish, and they gobble down the little ones quite quickly.
Back up on the bluff, there were several tiny birds flitting about in the trees, and this is a pretty terrible picture, but it is our first golden-crowned kinglet of the fall migration.
When I stopped by the pond a second time, the wood ducks were still AWOL, but look who did show up: our pied-billed grebe.
Finally, beside the soccer fields at the south end, there were several more tiny birds in the trees, but the far better picture came in the weeds below where I finally captured an image of a returning swamp sparrow. They’ve been here for a couple of weeks, at least, but they really like to skulk around in the tall weeds, and this one only gave us a look because it appears to be in hot pursuit of some tasty morsel.
That’s the show for today, folks, and it turned out a lot better than I expected. Instead of keeping the momentum going tomorrow, I’m scheduled to be in River Falls, on the far western edge of the state, to take part in this year’s Master Naturalist Summit. Since I spent that week at the Retzer Nature Center in Waukesha back in July to get the certificate, I figure I’d better make use of it and go learn something more at the summit. As usual, I’ll bring my camera along, and I’ll do my best to show you what I find out there.
