I couldn’t believe my eyes this morning when the sun came up a whole hour earlier than yesterday, which gave me an extra hour to enjoy Estabrook before going to join the Milwaukee Birders at Lake Park. What sort of fantastic sorcery is this?!?
As if that wasn’t enough, look who greeted me when I first got into the park. I haven’t seen a coyote there since back in June. Could I have conjured it with yesterday’s post?
At the river, the American black duck was back, and so was the gadwall. So maybe there were two different ducks all along, and nobody had to shapeshift.
Back on shore, I found my first November warbler, this tiny orange-crowned. I’ve seen yellow-rumps as late as December, but I’ve only seen orange-crowns into October, until now.
Then it was time to ride down to Lake Park, and the big treat there were a couple of rafts of scoters out on Lake Michigan. These are a few surf scoters, which I’ve even seen in the Lakeshore State Park lagoon, and who were floating not far offshore, but there was another batch farther out that contained a bunch of surfs, a bunch of black scoters, which have yet to allow me a presentable image, and even a pair of horned grebes.
Finally, back up on the bluff, I was able to get the prettiest picture of the day, this darling female eastern bluebird.
I see that it is supposed to be cloudy, cool, and breezy tomorrow morning for our weekly wildlife walk, so not necessarily ideal conditions, but at least rain appears to be unlikely, and if you’d like to get four different duck species or a late-season warbler to kick off your month, this might be your big chance. I’ll look for you at the beer garden parking lot at 8am.
