Our recent string of mornings in Estabrook Park that start out cold and breezy but are sunny and warm up quickly continued this morning, which worked out perfectly for the Fall Park Cleanup hosted by Friends of Estabrook Park. The event didn’t start until 10am, however, so I had plenty of time for a stroll through the park before that.
The pond was still empty, in fact there was a little ice on the water around the edges, and it appears that the wood ducks and the pied-billed grebe really have taken off for the winter. The wigeon on the river was also missing this morning, but the pair of gadwalls were still there.
The big surprise of the morning didn’t come on the water, for a change, and instead came when I was checking the disc golf course to see what the trash situation was, in case we had enough volunteers for the cleanup that we had to come up with places to send them. It turns out that there was enough trash to keep all the volunteers busy, but the point of this convoluted story is that there was also a quintet of wild turkeys!
We’ve seen plenty of individuals over the years, but this is the first time I’ve seen five in the park, and maybe they’ll stick around for a while. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Then it was time to run home, grab some breakfast, put on my rubber boots and get back to the beer garden for the start of the cleanup. We had a nice turnout of about a dozen volunteers, and I focused on the downstream island, which I think I got looking pretty good, so long as you stay on our side of the river from it.
