Signs of Life in Estabrook Park

Vermont is slow out of the gate…

Bob and I did make it to Vermont yesterday afternoon, the rest of the crew also arrived, and I did get out to the Lake Champlain waterfront nice and early this morning, but somebody must have tipped off the birds that I was going to go looking for them, because they kept themselves well-hidden so far.

I did have one fun close-call when I realized that a gull I was watching was actually an osprey carrying a fish, and then a bald eagle approached to see if the osprey needed any help with that. By the time I could bring my camera to bear, however, the stinkers flew right in front of the sun, and I lost them. At least I wasn’t trying to track them with my binoculars. Phew!

Thus, I’m forced to go back, at least for today, to the deep well that was coastal Maine. This first statuesque bird, a great egret, was hunting in the Scarborough Marsh, and we have seen them in Estabrook Park once in a while, but none have stopped in lately, and here’s hoping we get one this year.

Here’s one of the willets taking a break from flying around.

The tricolored heron kept its distance, so this is the best shot it would let me have.

I mentioned that the least terns were nesting, and here’s one of them on its carefully crafted depression in the sand.

The piping plover kept to the shoreline, probably because that’s where the food was, so here it is amongst the seaweed and clamshells.

The eider drake did give us a nice look at its face.

Finally, Bob and I did get out for a minute before he drove us to VT, and here’s an eider hen with her fuzzy little duckling.

Well, just about everyone is up by now, and we’ve gotta get on with our day, so wish me luck with the local fauna, and I’ll see what I can come up with for tomorrow.

Yes, we went to Scarborough Ferry…

Soon after I arrived at Portland International Jetport yesterday afternoon, just outside of Portland, Maine, my old high school buddy, Bob, picked me up and took me immediately to the Scarborough Marsh, were we saw mallards, willets, great egrets, double-crested cormorants, a belted kingfisher, and even a tricolored heron.

The marsh is huge, however, so plenty of the birds were content to keep their distance from the causeway were on, and those great distances, combined with the warmth of the afternoon sun made for some mediocre pictures, but this snowy egret, which we last saw in Dallas, showed me some pity and got to fishing close enough for a presentable image.

The willets, which we last saw on Caye Caulker in Belize, flew around a bit, and these two must have been distracted and also drifted close enough for a moment.

The action really started, though, when Bob took me to Ferry Beach, where the Scarborough River empties into Saco Bay. As soon as we stepped out onto the beach, we could see ducks out on the water, and I thought they looked like mallard hens, at first glance, but Bob casually mentioned that they were Common Eider (Somateria mollissima). When I took a closer look, all I could think was “common eider? They’re my very first eiders, and I don’t see anything common about them, especially that drake! Holy smokes!”

As we were watching them, and I was trying to get a picture, one came up from the bottom with a tasty treat, and a herring gull immediately flew over to see what it was.

As you can see, it turned out to be a crab, probably an Atlantic rock crab (Cancer irroratus). Mmm-mmm-mmm. Tasty indeed.

There were also small terns darting over the water, and as we walked around the bend of Chandler Point, we were able to get a closer look and discover that they were Least Terns (Sternula antillarum), another first for me. Several were nesting right on the beach, but I thought that this one showing off its short little legs made a more interesting sight.

Finally, the main attraction, and the reason Bob had dragged me to this beach in the first place, was this tiny Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus), even smaller than the semipalmated plover we just saw in Estabrook. I read that they are “an endangered shorebird protected by both State and Federal laws,” and “Scarborough works closely with partners from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Maine Audubon to protect the plovers on our beaches.” Cool.

Then it was time to get to Bob’s house, have some dinner, finish yesterday’s post, and hit the sack. Today, we drove over to Burlington, VT, on Lake Champlain to meet some more old friends and see if there’s any wildlife there. I’ll keep you posted.

Etosha National Park Revisited…

You guessed it, boys and girls, I don’t have any pictures from Estabrook Park today, and the reason is that I’m traveling again, but this time it’s just a little hop out east to meet up with some old high school buddies. So, while I’m sitting in airports and on airplanes today, it seems like the perfect opportunity to sift through a few more pictures of the amazing wildlife we got to see in Namibia’s Etosha National Park.

I had these pictures all picked out this morning, before I left, and my plan was to add some entertaining words along the way, but you know what they say about plans. Now it’s late, my host is fixing us some supper, and I’m gonna have to let these pretty birds speak for themselves. Sorry about that. They’re all from Etosha, and they’re all on the ground, except for the crow, because there are some but not a lot of trees there.

Kalahari Scrub-Robin (Cercotrichas paena)

Pied Crow (Corvus albus)

Double-banded Courser (Smutsornis africanus)

Crimson-breasted Gonolek (Laniarius atrococcineus)

Spike-heeled Lark (Chersomanes albofasciata)

Crowned Lapwing (Vanellus coronatus)

Capped Wheatear (Oenanthe pileata)

Tomorrow I’ll have some pictures to show you from here, and I hope you find them worth the wait.

A little less wet, and a little less birdy…

It was another dark and wet morning in Estabrook Park, but not as wet as yesterday. I didn’t see as much wildlife, however, and I didn’t get my first picture until I was on my way downstream and already below the falls, where I found this green heron fishing on the far riverbank. As I was lining up the best shot I thought I could manage, given the lack of light coming through the clouds, the little angler caught this delicious looking fish.

The next fun sight is this Pink-legged Tiger Moth (Spilosoma latipennis). We’ve seen Virginia tiger moths before, and I thought the little bit of reddish color might be a piece of some flower that got stuck there, but nope. That’s its namesake pink leg.

Many of you will recognize this hungry little muncher, a monarch caterpillar. I’ve seen the butterflies a few times, and they obviously have time to perch on milkweed plants, but none has posed for me yet this year.

And that’s it for Estabrook pictures today, which is just the break I needed to work on my stockpile of pictures from Namibia.

These are ostriches, of course, specifically common ostriches (Struthio camelus) and “the largest living species of bird.” We spotted this small herd soon after we entered Etosha National Park for the first time.

This next picture may not look like much, until you realize that the huge clump of straw hanging down from the top is just part of an enormous communal nest for sociable weavers (Philetairus socius), and that’s one of them flying straight up into it. The wikipedia article about them gushes that “these nests are perhaps the most spectacular structure built by any bird,” and it even cites a source, so you know that’s gotta be true!

Here’s a closer look at one of the striking and industrious little weavers. The article explains further that “these nests are amongst the largest built by any bird, and they are large enough to house over 100 pairs.” Wild, eh? Who would have thought that the largest bird and the largest bird nests could be found in the same park, but the latter is not built by the former?

Finally, the most common ungulate we saw on the whole trip has got to be the springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis). Not only did we see them in Pilanesberg and Etosha, but there were little herds out in the middle of nowhere all over Namibia, which was great to see. They are supposed to pronk, as I’ve seen pronghorns in North America do, but we didn’t get to see them do it on this trip. Next time!

Lastly, despite the wet morning, the forecast looks pretty good for this afternoon (less than 20% chance of rain), which is good news for the Friends of Estabrook Park picnic (5:00-7:30 in the beer garden), so if you’ve always wanted to question me in person on my editorial decisions, this could be your big chance.

Rained on, but not washed out…

The weather in Estabrook Park this morning was wetter than I expected, and we had no visitors for our weekly wildlife walk, but that’s probably because everyone else had the good sense to check the current radar before they headed out.

Luckily, it wasn’t all rain all the time, and I was able to take the rain cover off my camera by about 8:30, which was just in time to catch this mallard hen with three of her nine ducklings in the river beside the upstream island.

The big surprise at the river today was capturing this female belted kingfisher on film for the first time since April. I suspect that we don’t have a pair nesting in the island, for the first time since I’ve been keeping track, probably because of the crazy wet April we had. They nest in a burrow they dig into the side of a bank, and perhaps the soil was too soggy, or the water was too high, and they opted to dig elsewhere. Anyway, it’s great to see one, even if it’s just for a visit. Right, Lois?

As the morning warmed up, the bugs started to stir, and here’s one of several northern crescent butterflies that were flitting from perch to perch in the meadow beside the river at the north end, which remains blissfully unmowed, for now.

Back at the south end, this interesting looking character caught my eye as it flew in to cling to that grass stem. It’s a red soldier beetle (Cantharis rufa), and I’ve seen them before, but none have ever posed quite so photogenically as this one did.

Finally, I don’t know if this is the same doe or not that we saw mixing it up with a pair of coyotes, but she sure was enjoying a more peaceful scene today.

Lastly, the Friends of Estabrook Park will be holding their first picnic of the summer at the beer garden tomorrow afternoon from 5:00 to 7:30, and I plan to be there, so come on out to meet the crew. “Bring some food or buy some there, some members might even bring some sweets to share. As always, members enjoy free beer at the picnic, [and] feel free to bring new friends! We are usually seated in the southeast corner” of the beer garden.

Cedarburg Bog!

I had the extreme good fortune this morning of joining the Milwaukee Birders for their visit to the Cedarburg Bog, “one of the largest and most diverse wetlands in southern Wisconsin“, which I was stunned to learn is actually in Saukville, not Cedarburg, and is technically a fen, not a bog. Happily, the critters don’t seem to mind these mislabelings.

The first such critter, who seemed perfectly content there, was this ruby-throated hummingbird keeping her eggs warm on a branch just off the trail. Long-time readers may recall that we had a similar nest in Estabrook just last year, but this is the first hummingbird I’ve seen all summer, so I’m especially thrilled to see one again.

This next critter is a surprise even to the fine folks at ebird. It’s a brown creeper, in case you can’t tell from my artfully dark and grainy “photograph”, bringing food to its nest under that loose bark to which it is clinging, and it is considered “rare” for this location on this date. How fun!

As I understand it, a visit to Cedarburg Bog isn’t complete without seeing a carnivorous plant, and here’s a healthy-looking specimen of the Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea).

As luck would have it, they are currently in blossom, and here’s one of the intricate beauties, which have evolved to be “pollinated by bumble bees, honey bees, and Pitcher plant flies.”

As amazing as the pitcher plant is, it isn’t even the only carnivorous plant there, and here’s a Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) that is not nearly as in focus as I thought it was. Oops!

There is also a carnivorous bladderwort growing in the water there, but I couldn’t make a picture of that look pretty, so here’s a striking carnivorous insect, instead, a female twelve-spotted dragonfly, and our first such of the year.

Finally, the weather was very pleasant this morning, so there were several butterflies flitting about, and here’s the one that let me capture the nicest image, our first red-spotted purple of the year.

Lastly, back at Estabrook Park, the weather is forecast to be a little cooler, a little breezier, and a lot cloudier tomorrow morning than we’ve been enjoying lately, but after seeing our first dunlins and our first semipalmated plover just this past week, I hope you’re as excited for our weekly wildlife walk as I am. We also took advantage of the low water and hauled that nasty broken canoe, a shopping cart, one more tire, and a bunch of other junk, which recent floods have left for us, out of the river between the islands yesterday so the viewing should be better than ever. I’ll look for you at the beer garden parking lot at 7am and again at 8am.

The river delivers again…

After a nice rain to rinse the dust off everything, it was a magnificent morning in Estabrook Park, and my first treat of the day was finding another brood of mallard ducklings, nine this time, about halfway upstream. “Eat up, Kiddos!”

Even farther upstream, I also found another snapping turtle laying her eggs, and time will tell if the spot she chose gets enough sunlight and is high enough not to get flooded, but at least she had a much easier time digging the hole.

Meanwhile, just a bit offshore, the water is full of American toad tadpoles busily feeding on the algae growing on the rocks. I didn’t try counting them, but I would estimate their number to be in the hundreds, if not thousands. “Congratulations to everyone who contributed!”

I could hear killdeer out on the exposed river bottom, and as I tried to get a count of them, one flew in, but it was noticeably smaller than the others, and it only had one black band around its neck, not two. You can see it in the center of the picture below, while a more-traditional killdeer towers over it in the upper right corner.

Well, you’ll be stunned to learn that the smaller bird is not a young killdeer who just hasn’t gotten its second band yet. Instead, it is an entirely different species of bird, and our very first Semipalmated Plover (Charadrius semipalmatus) in the park. Long-time readers may recall that I’ve been able to show you one at McKinley Beach last spring and another on Caye Caulker in Belize last fall, but I’m especially thrilled to show you the one that finally found its way to our stretch of the Milwaukee River. “Welcome to Estabrook, Darling!”

The fine folks at ebird consider the plover to be “infrequent” in Milwaukee right now, but this next bird, a yellow-bellied flycatcher, is currently labeled “rare”! “You’re behind schedule, Sweetheart, and you’d better get the lead out or you’ll miss all the fun!”

Finally, on my way back downstream I found the wood duck family with five ducklings in almost the same spot as I had seen the mallards earlier, and they are starting to look noticeably bigger than when we first saw them just a week and a half ago.

Given the warm, calm air this morning, I thought for sure I’d have a new butterfly, moth, dragonfly, damselfly, or bumble bee to show you, but they must all be taking the day off. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow.

A return to saner weather, we can hope…

After the wettest April on record in Milwaukee, followed immediately by the driest May on record, everyone around here is wondering what June is gonna do, and I am happy to report that after a few dry days, we’re having a nice rainy morning. Let’s hope it doesn’t get carried away in either direction and instead reverts to the norm.

Anyway, it wasn’t raining already at sunrise, but the cloud cover was already thick, so I got into Estabrook Park a little later than usual lately, and the guy who runs his German shepherd loose on the soccer fields, a double no-no in Milwaukee County Parks, was already at it, so I headed straight down to the river for a change. My reward for the detour was coming across our first mallard ducklings for the year, and here are six of the seven little foragers getting right to work under Mom’s watchful eyes. Woo hoo!

After that stop at the river, I hiked back up onto the bluff to continue north, and the next surprise of the morning was this masterpiece of survival digging a hole for her eggs right beside the paved path. That would seem like not the greatest location, but I’ve learned my lesson from previous attempts to suggest someplace else, and I left her to it.

Just a bit farther up the paved path I spotted our first damselfly of the year, this handsome American rubyspot.

I made it all the way to the pond before the rain started, but then the radar did not look promising, so I hightailed it back home. Thus, I’ve got room for a few more pictures, and here’s a blue jay wondering “will the kid eat that?”, which is silly, of course, because anyone who’s seen birds feed their kids knows that the kids will eat literally anything.

I had such a nice session with the dunlins yesterday that here’s another picture of their tight formation flying that came out pretty nice.

I found my first real bumble bee of the season, and it turns out to be an improbably named Lemon Cuckoo Bumble Bee (Bombus citrinus). The “lemon” part of the name is “due to its lemon-yellow color,” simply enough, but the “cuckoo” part is because it “invades the colonies of other bumble bees, kills the resident queen, and takes control over the population of workers inside.” Yikes! That’s a little more drama than I was expecting!

On a lighter note, the dame’s rockets blossoming beside the soccer fields also attract black swallowtails, and here’s one from Wednesday, when I showed you the clearwing moth instead.

I see that we’re due for showers overnight, but they should clear out by tomorrow morning, so here’s hoping that pans out and I get more time to collect pictures for you.

Be still my heart!

Since I’ve started to sound like a broken record, I’ll spare you the weather report and get right to the action. Just as soon as I could see the soccer fields at the south end, and while it was still pretty dark out, I was stunned to find a couple of coyotes and a white-tailed doe appearing for all the world to be playing chase. Even though, or perhaps because it was outnumbered, the deer was chasing the coyotes about as much as they chased it back.

I read that coyotes can and will take down an adult deer if the winter is harsh or the deer is sick or injured, but neither was the situation here. Another possibility is that she has a fawn stashed somewhere and was distracting the coyotes to protect it. In any case, I never saw any contact between them, the coyotes gave up after a few minutes, and everyone retired to the cover of nearby woods. Phew! That sure was a first for me!

At the pond, the wood duck ducklings remain in hiding, or so we hope, and the main attraction was this green heron fishing from the island.

As I headed down the stairway to the river from the beer garden, this red squirrel had a look on its face which seemed to ask, “remember when you were that excited to get a picture of me?” I replied, of course, “don’t worry sweetheart, I still love taking your picture.” So, here we are.

Not to offend the red squirrels, or any other regular cuties, but the huge news of the morning was the arrival of this small flock of dunlins. Long-time readers may recall that I’ve seen them before, but never in Estabrook, until now.

Here they are settling into the buffet. When I realized that the change made to the falls, which allows native fish upriver to spawn, was about equivalent to removing a low dam, I had a hope that more exposed river bottom would attract more shorebirds, and this is exactly my dream coming true.

They must have been hungry because they really kept moving, but here’s a near portrait that one let me sneak.

Finally, it was a little warmer today than it’s been recently, so the insects were active by the time I was on my way home, and here’s our first Peck’s skipper butterfly of the year. It’s on invasive dame’s rocket blossoms, which I know ain’t great, but at least they’re pretty, and they provide some nectar to the pollinators, even if it’s not their ideal diet.

Lastly, Friends of Estabrook is working on converting that patch of weeds along the west edge of the southern soccer fields, where I took the picture above, into a “rain garden of native plants”, and they are looking for volunteers to help out on that project and the expansion of the existing pollinator garden closer to the middle parking lot. Specifically:

“Help is needed on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8-10 am, starting on June 9th. The first few weeks we will be watering the new plants, pulling weeds and transplanting native plants. We will also be putting mulch in the garden to suppress weeds and create paths. Then we will get the rain garden ready for seeding and planting in the Fall. We will meet at the pollinator garden. If you have native plants to donate, bring them along. Questions? Email Henry at htomasiewicz at gmail dot com“

Not who I expected to see…

It has mostly clouded up by now, lunch time, but the skies were pretty clear, and the wind was calm again in Estabrook Park earlier today, so it was another in a nice string of gorgeous mornings. The critters seemed to be continuing their boycott, and I was composing a long list of excuses in my head, until I started making my way home from the pond.

The one picture I did manage to get before then was of this white-breasted nuthatch showing off a breakfast morsel before flitting to its nesting cavity nearby. Sweetpea’s got mouths to feed.

There is still no sign of the dozen ducklings we saw on the pond Monday, but I was relieved to find the five on the river back in action after a few days out of sight, and here are a couple of the little adorables with their mom.

The youngsters are a little hungrier, bolder, oblivious, or some combinations of the above, and they came closer than Mom dared.

At the southern soccer fields, the kingbirds had moved on, and this olive-sided flycatcher had taken their place, although it kept to a much higher perch.

As I was working on the flycatcher picture above, I started to hear a familiar but unexpected call, and I was thrilled that I was able to get eyes on the singer, this astounding male scarlet tanager. I had figured that they’d all flown north already, but I was clearly mistaken. It’s a long way from South America after all.

Even better, he wasn’t alone, and here’s a female who looks quite interested in his song.

Finally, as I made my way across the fields to exit the park, I spotted another surprise, this snowberry clearwing moth. I read that they hibernate as pupae, so this one should have recently emerged, despite its rough appearance, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one before the bee balm blossoms in mid-July.

So, stragglers are still heading north, while some frontrunners appear to be a month ahead of schedule, and the most likely explanation is that there are always stragglers and frontrunners, but I just don’t often see them both on the same day. Tune in tomorrow to see what surprises I stumble upon next.