Signs of Life in Estabrook Park

From cottontails to hairstreaks…

It was a gorgeous morning out here in the Constitution State, and my sister and I dutifully set out before the sun crested the horizon, but I didn’t get a lot of pictures to show for it.

I did see this little cutie right beside the trail, and we’ve seen plenty of eastern cottontails before, but I’ve recently learned that they are not native to New England. Instead, I need to keep my eyes peeled for the New England Cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis), which is indeed native here. Maybe someday I’ll be so lucky

Once I got back to my folks’ place, I was pleasantly surprised to find this chipping sparrow in their cedar tree. Their breeding range covers most of the continental US and a lot of Canada, but we don’t see much of them in Estabrook outside of spring and fall migration, and I wonder if the same is true out here.

Much less surprising was this dapper looking American goldfinch. They sure have been thick out here this trip.

Since the day was so nice, and I wasn’t getting much for bird pictures, I checked the weeds next door, and here’s a pearl crescent that was trying to sun itself among them.

Finally, the highlight of the day, at least for me, is this slightly roughed-up, but still quite identifiable, and my very first, red-banded hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops). This makes our third hairstreak butterfly, on top of the banded hairstreaks in Estabrook and a gray hairstreak out here last September.

Things are going to start getting busy out here tomorrow as relatives begin arriving for my folks’ 65th wedding anniversary, so opportunities to post might become few and far between, but I’ll do my best.

I did! I did taw a puddy tat!

My sister and I did hike the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail again this morning, and the weather was pretty nice, if a bit cloudy, but we didn’t see anything remarkable, and I barely took a picture. Instead, the big excitement came yesterday evening when she spotted this gorgeous creature slinking along the edge of my folks’ yard. For those of you unfamiliar with those black-and-white ears and that short tail, this is my very first image of a bobcat (Lynx rufus), aka wildcat, bay lynx, or red lynx. It was barely bigger, though certainly heftier, than my folks’ large house cat.

I did immediately try to take a picture with my phone, but it was at least 50 yards away, and thankfully my camera was just inside the house, so I bolted in to grab it. By the time I came back out, the cat had moved on a bit, but my sister pointed to where it had gone, and I found it just as it pounced into some weeds to catch some small rodent. Here’s a picture with the rodent mostly concealed by the grass to spare your tender eyes.

The rodent was gone in less than a minute, and then the cat continued its prowl. My sister, the vet, confirms from my pictures that this is a female, and she never did let me capture an image of more than just the side of her face. I checked on iNaturalist, and I found that they have been spotted in Wisconsin, but the closest sighting to Milwaukee was in Muskego, so I don’t have much hope of seeing one in Estabrook Park any time soon. Thank goodness for occasional visits to Cheshire, eh? Just look at that paw she has!

Anyway, so as not to leave you with just those three bobcat pictures, as amazing as they are, here’s another look at the belted kingfisher over the Quinnipiac River yesterday morning.

Here’s another look at some of the dozens of mute swans on the Broad Brook Reservoir on Saturday. They appear to be mobbing a great blue heron, but everyone just minded their own business, and perhaps the heron has learned that swans can’t be pushed around as it seems that cormorants can.

Here’s one of the cedar waxwings I mentioned, and I don’t know if this is a youngster who hasn’t yet grown in its fancy tail feathers with a yellow stripe across the tips, an adult who is in the middle of a molt, or if something else is going on, but it’s still a pretty bird, nevertheless.

Finally, here’s one of the more than a dozen gray catbirds that enjoy the habitat along the edge of the trail.

Same state, different pond…

The weather was still pretty nice out here in the Nutmeg State this morning, even though the skies are no longer crystal clear. My sister also had today off of work, so we headed out early to visit Hanover Pond and the Quinnipiac River Gorge Trail, where we’ve had some good luck before.

Our first treat was spotting another bald eagle, either looking for or digesting its breakfast from a perch high over an island in the pond. Either way, I was able to get a recognizable picture this time.

There were also herons, egrets, cormorants, swans, geese, and ducks out on the water, which are all great to see, but it’s a pretty big “pond”, and so my pictures ain’t all that great. Eventually, we figured we had seen all we were going to see, so we started up the trail, and it didn’t take long for this little cutie to allow me about the nicest picture I’ve ever gotten of a Carolina wren.

Perhaps the close confines of the narrow gap in the trees along the Quinnipiac River deserves all the credit, but soon after the wren, this youngish female belted kingfisher, with an interesting take on their usual crest of feathers, did me a similar favor.

Even a great blue heron got in on the act.

Those are the highlights from this morning, so here’s another cemetery bird from Friday, this time a young-looking northern mocking bird.

Finally, we have dragonflies out here, too, if you can believe it, and here’s a blue dasher from my folks’ yard.

The reservoir comes through again…

The recent cold snap we’ve had in Connecticut is taking the weekend off, and I think a high pressure system is sitting right over us, so it is a picture perfect August morning here with mild temps, still air, and clear skies. As I mentioned, my sister doesn’t have to work today, so we drove out to the reservoir on the edge of town where we’ve seen bald eagles and great blue herons nesting before.

Everyone is done with nesting by now, but plenty of birds are still hanging around there, and here’s a belted kingfisher who stopped by before the sun came over the hill.

It appears that the mute swans have had a really good year, and we counted 42 of them on the water, which is certainly the most I’ve ever seen in one place. Wow!

We did see an eagle, but it kept its distance, and my sister found me this osprey instead. We also watched a second osprey head out for breakfast and come back with a nice big fish in short order.

The bushes along the causeway that splits the reservoir were full of little birds, and we saw waxwings, orioles, and goldfinches, but this eastern kingbird let me have the nicest picture.

We counted over a dozen cormorants perched in the trees over the island where the herons had nested last summer, and here’s one drying off after the sun finally reached down to the water.

Finally, back to the bushes, here’s my first Canada warbler of the fall migration. Woo Hoo!

A little progress in CT at last…

Sorry about the radio silence lately. An odd confluence of events and conditions out here have really put a damper on my picture taking this week, but I finally had some luck this morning.

Besides the American crows and blue jays we see in Estabrook, I see two more corvids regularly out here. This first one is a common raven that I photographed while I was standing on the front steps of my folks’ house, and I’m a little surprised to see them here but can find no report of one ever being spotted in Milwaukee County. They seem simply not interested in a big swath of the south and central US, so I might never get to see one of these magnificent beaks back home. Darn.

The other corvid I see out here is the fish crow (Corvus ossifragus), which is slightly smaller than the American crow and whose range hugs the east coast and extends up some river valleys, almost a mirror image of the ravens’, but with some gaps, as in Milwaukee, and some overlaps, such as right here. Since they look so much like American crows, the best way for me to ID them is by their caw, which I find a lot easier to distinguish. Here’s one on a utility wire with some morsel it just found.

Here, a second one has joined it to ask for a piece.

And here they both are checking out how it tastes.

Speaking of morsels, here’s a young-looking green heron, still sporting its spots, with a small frog it caught but that it doesn’t seem to know what to do with now.

Here’s one of the latest in the long line of invasive species we’ve managed to bring to our shores, a spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula), on my folks’ front lawn. It appears that they haven’t yet reached Milwaukee, but I suspect, as with the emerald ash borer before it, that is simply a matter of time.

Finally, we’ve been to a couple of cemeteries this week to visit family graves, and I was pleasantly surprised to find both places full of eastern bluebirds. It appears that they like to perch on headstones to watch for bugs in the lawn onto which they can pounce. If only they knew, they might consider themselves lucky that they got named after their striking color and not after where people spot them, as the chimney swifts and barn owls have.

The weather is supposed to be nice this weekend, and my sister has off of work, so I have a hope that we’ll get to visit someplace interesting to see who lives there. Wish me luck!

Better than nothin’, I hope…

There has been quite a change in the weather overnight out here in Connecticut. Sure, it was cloudy yesterday, but temps were in the high 80s, and it felt as though the humidity percentage was, too. This morning, however, when my sister and I set out, it was still cloudy, but temps were in the low 60s, and it was very windy. By 10:30 am, the temperature has “soared” to 65, and the trees are still swaying in the breeze. Sheesh! Good thing I packed a sweater.

Anyway, I poured through the pictures I did manage to take, and I think I found three that are at least interesting, if not so pretty. This first one shows a scene from the pond between the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail and a “wholesale distributor” called Bozzuto’s. It’s the same spot where we saw the river otters last winter, but it looks quite different in the summer. Just in this one picture, there are two or three mallards on the right, a pair of wood ducks in the middle, and a double crested cormorant on the left. That’s in addition to the Canada geese, green herons, and one spotted sandpiper that didn’t get in the shot. Not bad for a shallow pond surrounded on three sides by parking lots and warehouses, eh?

Here’s one of the green herons looking for its breakfast.

Finally, a couple miles south, there’s another, smaller body of water that also probably connected with the old canal, and we counted nearly two dozen wood ducks. Most were foraging, preening, or otherwise ignoring us, but this one wasn’t quite so trusting.

The clouds are supposed to stick with us for tomorrow, but at least the wind will die down, so maybe I’ll have some better luck.

Connecticut gets off to a rough start…

Things are not quite going according to plan here in Connecticut. I had an errand to run first thing this morning, and by the time I got down to the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, where I’ve had some great luck in the past, I couldn’t find a decent picture to take. Oh well. Let’s hope for better luck tomorrow, and enjoy one last look at the black swallowtail on the Mexican sunflower at the pollinator garden in Estabrook Park.

Taking the show on the road again…

I couldn’t make it into Estabrook Park this morning because we’re off to Connecticut to see my folks, and I doubt very much that I’ll have a chance to get any pictures there today, so here are a few leftovers from the amazing August we’ve been having so far.

If not top of the list, then surely on the podium at least, has got to be the river otter who came to eat our crayfish back on August 8th. As I mentioned that day, I got to watch it catch and eat crayfish for a full ten minutes, and in that time, I did manage to capture one more image in which you can tell the subject is a river otter. Plus, look how white its teeth are.

I wish I also had a leftover cormorant image from the 7th, but I used them all up that same day. Instead, here’s another look at the cute little house wren by the beer garden I saw afterwards.

Here’s an interesting glimpse at the ruby-throated hummingbird on the 11th as it turned to check for threats just before taking off to go sip some more nectar from the cup plants.

Of the two magnificent garden spiders we saw on Thursday, I could only find the one in the meadow at the north end yesterday, and it somehow avoided collecting any dew this time.

As I was searching for butterflies at the pollinator garden yesterday, something shot up and perched in a tree above. I hoped it might be a butterfly, but it took me a while to find it, and when I eventually did, here’s what I got for my efforts. In case you don’t recognize it, that’s one of the hundreds of northern dog-day cicadas that have been filling the air with their melodic call all month.

Finally, the spectacular black swallowtail yesterday was very particular about which flowers it would visit, and besides the purple cone flower in yesterday’s picture, the only other one it liked was this bright orange Mexican sunflower, aka tithonia, which I read is of the “torch” variety. Either way, it sure makes for a nice picture, eh?

With any luck, I’ll have some new, east coast content for you on Sunday. Wish me luck!

Finally, a turn back towards normalcy…

It was a nice morning in Estabrook Park, and things are starting to look a little closer to normal at the river. The sand bags placed to allow work on our side of the falls are just starting to poke through the water, and it is now possible to walk along the river trail from the falls to the north end while only getting muddy but not wet, and the mud isn’t deep, just slippery.

As I was carefully making my way north along that river path, I finally captured this image, such as it is, of a northern waterthrush on its way back south.

At the north end, at least one belted kingfisher is back to catching fish out of the river.

At the flowers behind the dog park, I finally got a picture of a red admiral. In previous years, they have been one of the most plentiful butterflies in the park, but they have been oddly scarce this year.

There were the usual three or four red-spotted purples and four or five hackberry emperors, but here’s one of several silver-spotted skippers that I’ve been ignoring.

At the pollinator garden, I was happy to see that at least one pearl crescent has arrived.

The main attraction, however, has got to be this male black swallowtail, quite possibly the same one that we saw on Wednesday.

With all the competition lately, the monarchs have had to up their game, and this one did just that.

Finally, at the weeds beside the southern soccer fields, this critter gave me a bit of cognitive dissonance as it clearly looked like a moth, but it also scampered around the blossoms in broad daylight like a butterfly.

It would even pause on a blossom, as though it were feeding, but I could never spot a proboscis, so I don’t know how it was getting any nectar. Anyway, it turns out to be our very first corn earworm moth (Helicoverpa zea), and I read that “the larvae … [are] a major agricultural pest. Since it feeds on many different plants [it] has been given many different common names, including the cotton bollworm and the tomato fruitworm.”

Lastly, the goldfinch are starting to pick apart the pods of thistle seeds.

Lots of pairs…

It was nearly a picture-perfect day in Estabrook, and the clear skies let me get into the park nice and early. I don’t know if we were there before the guy who runs his German shepherd loose over the soccer fields every morning, or if the deer have just learned to wait until he and his dog are gone, and I just got lucky with my timing, but I sure did enjoy the rare treat of watching them mosey across the fields and stop at this fruit tree on the other side of the parkway to grab some sweets. The bucks antlers are asymmetrical, and I wonder if he’s the same one we’ve seen before.

Just a bit farther norther, where the bluff squeezes the paved path up against the parkway, look who I found on the osprey’s lamp post, the first kestrel we’ve seen in a while.

At the pond, I found eight wood ducks, only one hooded merganser, and no belted kingfishers or green herons. Thank goodness this young great blue heron gave me a picture to take.

At the river, it appears that the water has finally receded another foot, after seeming to hold steady since Monday, and more of the river path was accessible for a change. I don’t know if that is why this pair of kingfishers were back at the upstream island, or if they just needed a break from all the commotion on the pond, but here they are.

In the wild flower meadow, the big new arrival is this stunning yellow garden spider with its trademarked zig-zag stabilimenta. It appears bejeweled because it is still soaked with dew. What a sight, eh? If it looks less than impressive in your email client or on my website, you know what to do.

At the stand of cup plants and joe-pye weed behind the dog park, the red-spotted purples keep getting thicker, and I believe I could count six today. Here’s one posing perfectly, …

and here are a couple more paying more attention to each other than to me. You can even see part of a fourth one in the bottom of the image and behind the focal plane.

Meanwhile, hackberry emperors were doing nearly the same thing at the pollinator garden. They’re a little smaller and flit a little faster, so I had a harder time counting them, but I’m sure there were at least six, …

and some of them also paired up. I find it wild that I didn’t see my first one until the summer of 2023, I didn’t see one at all in 2024 and had to make do with a tawny emperor, but this summer they are thick as thieves. The red-spotted purples haven’t been quite as scarce in the past, but their increase in numbers this summer is equally remarkable.

The odd coincidences just kept coming because I found only my second yellow garden spider of the year in the weeds beside the soccer fields, and it has had enough morning sun by then to be all dried out, but this image will also improve with magnification.

Finally, if the spiders creep you out, here’s a nice tiger swallowtail to cleanse your palette. The color scheme is similar, but somehow arranged in a less-scary pattern. Anyway, this one doesn’t have the fancy row of blue blotches along the trailing edge of its hind wings, so it’s a male, and the one we saw on Monday was a female.