Signs of Life in Estabrook Park

A bit of a rebound…

The temps have warmed back up to only seasonably cool, and the sky was crystal clear again, but the wind was still blowing, so the weather in Estabrook Park this morning was a mixed bag. After yesterday’s no-hitter, I didn’t have high hopes, but the critters put on a pretty nice mid-November show.

The first mammal to show its face this month turns out to be this little American red squirrel beside the pond.

I’ve seen a Great blue heron only a couple of times since Anne and I got back, and it has been much shier than usual, but today I finally managed to capture it on film.

I spotted my first American tree sparrows of the season, and we haven’t seen them since last March. “Welcome back, Sweeties!”

I didn’t see any odd ducks today, but there has been a Mallard hen and drake on the pond recently, and here’s the hen.

And here’s the drake.

Since there’s still a little bit of room left in this post, here’s my first olive-throated parakeet (Eupsittula nana) picture, from the Crooked Tree Lodge. We sure heard them and glimpsed them dashing from treetop to treetop near Tikal, but they wouldn’t enter the photo booth until we were back in Belize.

Finally, here’s a tiny lantana leaftier moth (Orphanostigma haemorrhoidalis), also from Crooked Tree Lodge, and I read that “leaftier” means “a moth larva that lives in a folded leaf held together by silk strands.” So, there you go.

The forecast for tomorrow has similar temps and sun, but the wind is supposed to die down a bit, which sounds wonderful. Maybe I’ll be as lucky with the critters.

A no-hitter!

I don’t know if it was the weather, which was no worse than yesterday, or me, but the critters in Estabrook pitched a no-hitter today. Oh sure, I glimpsed some deer, a great blue heron, etc., just as a runner might get to base with a walk or an error, but I didn’t get a single picture. Darn.

The good news, however, is that I still have a few pictures left from our recent trip. Phew! So, here are a few from Belize that I haven’t had room to show you yet.

As we were leaving the Caracol archeological site, and soon after Anne spotted her first gray fox, our driver pulled over quickly and said, “there’s a Laughing falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans).” Well, I looked right away, and I thought he was kidding because all I saw was a power pole with one of those high-voltage insulators on top, but that was no insulator! It was a white bird with a jet-black mask: a laughing falcon. When we asked how it got that name, our guide played us a sample of its call, and all was perfectly clear. Do yourself a favor and follow the link, click on the “listen” button in the lower right corner, and be amazed.

Before we left Caracol, I spotted my first ever summer tanager (Piranga rubra). I see that we do get to see them from time to time in Milwaukee, but I have not yet been so lucky.

There was also a clay-colored thrush, which I did see before in Guatemala, but it didn’t let me get a picture as nice as this.

As you may recall, after our short diversion to Tikal in Guatemala, Anne and I returned to Belize to hit the beach on Caye Caulker. Well, neither of us is really into hitting the beach, which is just as well because Caye Caulker doesn’t really have beaches. Instead, it has tropical mockingbirds (Mimus gilvus), which I did not even know existed before this.

The natural coastline of the caye is mostly a band of mangroves with a few gaps, and we found this darling juvie black-bellied plover (Pluvialis squatarola) foraging in one of those gaps.

On my last excursion inland, I thought I saw another hooded oriole, and was glad to have another chance at a better picture. But, that would be too easy, and my sources inform me that this is an immature orange oriole (Icterus auratus), instead. Ha!

Lastly, back at Cahal Pech, were we first visited, one of these amazing butterflies, a Julia Heliconian (Dryas iulia), finally relented and posed for a picture.

I’m off this afternoon to give my talk on my trip to Ukraine back in June at Northshore School for Seniors, and I understand that there are still seats available, in case you want to drop in. If not, perhaps I’ll see you on Saturday, when Friends of Estabrook Park is hosting a “clean-up” event, and believe you me, despite our best efforts, there is still plenty of cleaning up from the flood back in August still to do

Now that’s a cold snap!

Brrrr! It was a tad brisk this morning in Estabrook Park. Happily, the forecast lake effect snow stayed south of us, the wind didn’t feel nearly as strong as I feared, and the sky was crystal clear.

It was cold enough, for the first time this season, to freeze small puddles solid and form ice on the pond and some parts of the river. Here’s a reflection off the river of the sun coming over the bluff, and you can see open water in the bottom half but a skin of large ice crystals in the upper half.

The hardy birds were up and at ’em nevertheless, and here’s a hermit thrush beside the river with what appears to be a tiny bit of ice on the tip of its bill.

We even had a few straggler fall migrants, and here’s a yellow-rumped warbler foraging on the exposed river bottom.

I stopped by the beer garden parking lot at 8am, as promised, and two warmly dressed nature enthusiasts were there to join me on our weekly wildlife walk. We headed to the pond first and counted a couple dozen house finches in the bushes on the island, in hopes of finding a stray redpoll, but we had no luck with that. Meanwhile, the red-bellied woodpeckers, which had been oddly quiet since my return, finally showed themselves, and here’s one taking advantage of that clear, blue sky.

As we circled around the back side of the pond, at least one, and possibly two, Cooper’s hawks flew in, and this is the one that stopped to see what was on the menu.

The next surprisingly late fall migrant, a killdeer, was also foraging on the expose river bottom at the north end.

Finally, we might get lucky and have one or two more days warm enough for the insects to come out before winter settles in for good, but today was not one of those days. Thus, it is high time we transition to season-appropriate imagery, such as this female cardinal by the pond, doing her very best puffbird impersonation.

Winter gives us a taste of things to come…

It was cloudy, cold, and windy this morning at Lakeshore State Park, but at least the snow had stopped by sunrise. I don’t know which shock did it, or if it was the combination, but most of the birds were in hiding, and we only counted 7 species.

Happily, one of those species was the bald eagle, and here’s one of a pair that soared high over the water. (And, as you will soon see, we’re still not out of the woods with this whole image handling thing, so I feel compelled to use both methods until I do get it sorted. I know some of you will see two normal images, some of you will see one normal and one stretched, and some of you will see just one image plus a link you can click on to view it in Flickr, but at least all of you should see at least one good image, and I don’t yet have a better solution. Sorry about that. If you see something other than one of these three scenarios, please let me know.)

Another of those few species we did see this morning was a swan, but they were flying too high for my gear to enable detecting if they were tundra or trumpeter swans. Either way, they’re the first swans I’ve seen of the fall migration.

It wasn’t until I made my way north along the lake that I spotted a couple of small bufflehead flocks diving for their breakfasts, more firsts of the season, and the ones at the Shorewood Nature Preserve let me get closer. I sure hope a few of these little cuties visit us on the Milwaukee River in Estabrook this winter.

As usual, it seems, lately, I have plenty of room to include a few more pictures from our recent trip, and there are still a lot of them left, so let’s get to it. Here’s one of a pair of striking northern jacanas (Jacana spinosa), cousins to the wattled jacanas we saw in Brazil, that we saw back in Flores, Guatemala before we visited Tikal.

Once we got to Tikal, this gorgeous bat falcon (Falco rufigularis) perched right over the parking area just outside our hotel.

Finally, we heard howler monkeys overnight, but we didn’t get to see them, Yucatán Black Howler Monkeys (Alouatta pigra), until we visited the Tikal archeological site the next morning.

Lastly, another butterfly on the side of the Great Pyramid was this dainty Theona checkerspot (Chlosyne theona).

The forecast for tomorrow morning is COLD, to say the least, but at least the sun should be out, so that might help. Sunrise is back before 7am, these days, but at this time of year, it sure takes its sweet time climbing into the sky. Thus, I will look for wildlife walkers in the beer garden parking lot, but I’m gonna hold off until 8am. You are welcome to start earlier if you want, and I’ll see you at 8.

A little HTML before the snow flies…

Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond to the image handling test I sent out earlier today. It appears that WordPress’s “custom HTML” block does solve most of the problems that folks were having with images, so I’m gonna try using only that today and see what I inadvertently break next.

As forecast, temps were in the 30s, and the sky was overcast, but the wind was lighter than I feared, so it wasn’t a bad November morning to look for critters in Estabrook Park. Even better, it seems that most have gotten over their pique about my recent absence and came out to say “hi” today.

Things got off to a fun start when I spotted this merlin just north of the southern soccer fields.

Our Estabrook mammal of the day is this raccoon, who either couldn’t fit farther into that hole or was just too warm to crawl all the way into bed.

As fun as those two sights were, the prize for sight of the morning probably should go to this juvenile bald eagle, perched high over the downstream island and doing its best Regan MacNeil impersonation.

Finally, I was relieved to find a white-throated sparrow this morning, after coming up empty yesterday.

As before, I’m a little short on pictures today, so here are a few more shots from my recent trip. First is a wedge-tailed sabrewing (Pampa curvipennis) who made itself a regular fixture near the table were we ate at the Jaguar Inn just outside of the Tikal archeological site.

When we were at the watering hole in the jungle being amazed by the boat-billed herons, Anne just happened to notice another gray fox slinking around right behind us and a lot closer than the previous one she spotted.

Lastly, here’s a phaon crescent butterfly (Phyciodes phaon) I saw on the way back from the watering hole.

Tomorrow morning I plan to join the Milwaukee Birders at Lakeshore State Park despite the forecast snow showers, to see if any ducks from up north have arrived yet. Wish me luck, and maybe I’ll see you there.

Image handling test…

As you may know, I use WordPress to format these posts and email them to you. Also, WordPress only provides 3gb of image storage, which I quickly burned through, so I have been hosting the images on Flickr and embedding them in my posts. This works mostly fine.

The problem is that some of you have told me that the aspect ratio of the images is off in the posts you receive by email. Since that didn’t happen for everyone, I assumed the issue was with how your particular email client handled embedded images from WordPress, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

Well, I recently learned that there might actually be something I can do on my end to help your email client render the images properly. So, this is a test. I have inserted the same image twice via two different methods, and I have done this for an image in portrait orientation and one in landscape. That makes four images altogether.

If you have been seeing incorrectly rendered images on your end, please let me know if either method improves things for you.

Here’s a white-whiskered puffbird embedded with WordPress’s “Flickr embed” block.

Here’s the same white-whiskered puffbird embedded via WordPress’s “custom HTML” block.

Here’s a least grebe embedded with WordPress’s “Flickr embed” block.

Here’s the same least grebe embedded via WordPress’s “custom HTML” block.

If this helps, great and sorry it took me so long to sort out. If not, it didn’t hurt too much to try, and maybe it will provide a clue to a solution that does work.

Autumn is sure here now…

Anne and I arrived home safe, sound, and on time last evening, which is always nice. In Estabrook Park this morning it was cool, but not cold, windy, and sunny, which is also nice for a November day in southeastern Wisconsin. The critters seemed miffed, however, perhaps because I was away for so long, and I struggled to see many, let alone get pictures. The pond appeared empty of waterfowl, but I heard that folks saw a bald eagle soaring overhead, which I completely missed. Dang.

Anyway, this female belted kingfisher over the river was one of the few who not only showed up but also let me sneak a picture. “Thanks, Sweetie!”

Given the air temperature, I was giving the insects a pass today, so I was quite pleasantly surprised to spot this dragonfly, another autumn meadowhawk, of which we’ve seen a few this fall.

And that, sadly, was all I was able to manage this morning. The silver lining is that it leaves a lot of space for more trip pictures, so here they are.

The bare-throated tiger-heron at Crooked Tree Lodge must have been unimpressed of the picture I took of its cousin beside the road in Guatemala, because it really put on a show Wednesday after lunch, although it looks less than please with the chore.

We saw plenty of yellow-crowned night herons on Caye Caulker, but I hadn’t seen a black-crowned night heron all trip. That was until the boat ride at Crooked Tree. There was a youngster, like the ones we see from time to time at the pond in Estabrook, but it’s hard to beat the dashing look of a mature adult.

There was no shortage of insects at Crooked Tree, believe you me, and this little beauty, a spot-tailed dasher (Micrathyria aequalis), may be the smallest dragonfly I’ve ever seen.

Finally, another bug on the smaller side and just as pretty was the Hermes satyr (Hermeuptychia hermes), of which there were quite a few.

Lastly, back in Estabrook, the work crew has completely hauled away the pile of broken limestone that they excavated from the river bottom, and now they appear to be wrapping up relandscaping their work area.

The forecast for tomorrow is a little cooler, a little less wind, and a lot less sun, so enjoy the blue sky while you can.

One more post before I go…

As promised, Anne and I head home today, but I had time before breakfast for one more walk around the Crooked Tree Lodge, and I am sure glad I did.

This little cutie is a green kingfisher (Chloroceryle americana), who I also first saw in Brazil, but had failed to capture on film until today. Compared to the enormous ringed kingfishers I’ve seen here and even the belted we have in Estabrook, this one is quite a miniature in size, but certainly not in attitude.

Before supper last evening, I got to go on a little boat ride down the lagoon and back. I got to see a bunch of herons, including my first black-crowned night herons of the trip, but the big surprise was this enormous green iguana (Iguana iguana) casually chewing the shrubbery along the shore. I’d bet it is at least five feet long, if you include the tail.

Finally, after several false alarms, I did find what appears to be a true monarch butterfly. I read that they do migrate, but just between the highlands and the lowlands around here, not the crazy trip the ones we see in Estabrook get to make.

There’s no time for editing, so sorry about all the typos, but it’s time to get on the road to the airport.

Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary

Anne and I arrived at the Crooked Tree Lodge mid-afternoon yesterday, and the sights have been fantastic. If you read this blog, and I hope you do, then you know that Anne has taken me to some wonderful places, and I have had the good fortune to see plenty of amazing creatures, but I have not yet seen anything quite like this.

I can’t remember if it was Anne or I who first spotted a large-ish black bird near the top of a big, but not too tall, tree, but once I knew it was there, I got right to work trying to capture an image. The foliage on the tree was pretty thick, however, so I was not having much luck. Worse, the bird finally tired of me and bolted. My heart sank, but not for long. The bird only flew across the driveway and settled onto the bare branch of a fallen tree barely above eye level. Perfect!

Then things got really crazy. It turns out that the first tree was full of these birds, and they all followed the first. Even better, they appear to really like perching together unlike any wild bird I have ever seen. Even pigeons on the Port Washington Road bridge in the middle of winter don’t bunch up this tightly.

It turns out that these precious creatures are groove-billed anis (Crotophaga sulcirostris), and I saw their cousins, the greater ani and the smooth-billed ani, in Brazil, but they sure didn’t act like this. What a treat!

One surprise on this trip, among many, is that I have seen few, if any, sparrows and finches. Not even house sparrows. Thus, I was very excited to see this next bird, a Morelet’s seedeater (Sporophila morelleti). It turns out that there is an entire genus of these so-called “seedeaters”, and it “contains 41 species.” Wow!

I first saw this next species of bird back in 2017, but I’ve never managed to capture an image until now. Say “hello” to the very first roadside hawk (Rupornis magnirostris) I’ve captured on film, and “yes,” that is its official common name.

Similarly, I first glimpsed a vermilion flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus) in Big Bend National Park, but they have eluded my camera until today. This little beauty not only relented this morning, but it posed magnificently. What a stunner, eh?

Not all the miracles came in feathers today, and here’s a brown basilisk (Basiliscus vittatus), which is nicknamed the “Jesus Christ lizard” for its ability to run across the surface of water. I had the good fortune to see that feat today.

Finally, the place is just hopping with butterflies, and here’s a darling little (Juditha caucana), who may have the common name “Caucana metalmark”.

Tomorrow, we say our final goodbyes to Belize and Guatemala and start our journey home. See you soon.

Caye Caulker keeps up the pace…

Anne and I took the ferry back to the mainland this morning, but before we left, I had one more outing to look for wildlife on Caye Cauker, and what an outing it was.

We’ve seen blue herons, and white egrets, and even a blue heron that is white for its first year, but what if we had a blue and white heron? All you would have to do then is add a little purple to its back, and you’d have a tricolored heron (Egretta tricolor).

That’s quite the long, straight beak, but if you prefer a long, decurved beak, then this Hudsonian whimbrel (Numenius hudsonicus) may be just the ticket.

If that’s a tad too long or too decurved, you could dial both back a bit with this short-billed dowitcher (Limnodromus griseus). It seems that they have every sort of shore or wading bird here that you could imagine.

If passerines are more your speed, get a load of these characters. This first one is a bananaquit (Coereba flaveola), which I first glimpsed in Brazil, back in 2023, but never managed to capture on film. Even this one wouldn’t let me move to my left enough to get that darn piece of straw out from in front of its face. “Well, hello there, you evasive little stinker.”

Next, we have a hooded oriole (Icterus cucullatus), which I did not know even existed until I spotted this amazing creature.

I had heard that there are iguanas on the island, but it took my last outing to finally spot this magnificent black spiny-tailed iguana (Ctenosaura similis).

Lastly, after the ferry dropped us off in Belize City, we got a ride back inland to the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, where the birds are great, and I’ll show you some tomorrow, but let me wrap this up with a gorgeous white peacock butterfly (Anartia jatrophae).