Signs of Life in Estabrook Park

It was nice while it lasted…

It started out cloudy, and the clouds are back again, but there was a moment in Estabrook Park this morning when the sky was clear and the sun shone brightly. Plus, the temps were pretty mild, especially in the sun, and the winds were lighter than I feared, so it was a very nice time for a walk.

My first treat came as I hiked up from the river toward the pond. I believe there were a pair of deer, though I never managed to see them both at once, and the little nubs of antlers on this guy make me wonder if they weren’t the pair we saw Saturday morning.

The wood ducks and grebe were on the pond, but our hooded merganser appears to have moved on. Perhaps it had had just about enough out of the wood ducks. So, I kept moving north, and my next treat came near the boat ramp when this gorgeous red-tailed hawk kept coming to hunt from the bare tree over my head. Every time I tried to take its picture, it took off again, but then it would come back. I’m not sure exactly what or who it was after, but I did manage to get an okay picture eventually. Too bad about those branches in the background, but I think you can still make out that blue sky I was gushing about above.

In between hawk visits, this song sparrow burst into song a little closer to the ground.

Finally, not all the warblers are gone yet, and I saw a few yellow-rumped at the pond, but this orange-crowned foraging in the bushes right beside the paved path let me sneak a better picture.

Lastly, since I’m so low on pictures from this morning, let me show you one more of the pied-billed grebe valiantly trying to swallow whole that fish it caught yesterday.

Ooh! I almost forgot. It appears that the crew has finally finished lowering the far side of the falls, and they started removing the sandbags from their coffer dam today.

Some afternoon delights…

I’m sorry this is coming out so late, but I was tied up in the morning, didn’t get into Estabrook until noon, then had a meeting on campus, and here we are. The good news is that I was pleasantly surprised by how much wildlife there was to see in the park that late in the day.

The wood ducks on the pond were mostly down for their siestas, but they do so in such a photogenic way that I can’t really fault them. Can you?

The little pied-billed grebe, however, was still quite hungry and caught a fish that I thought must be just too big for it to choke down, but it gulped and gulped and swallowed that fish whole.

The bigger surprise, for me at least, was finding our first hooded merganser of the fall. The clouds were pretty thick all afternoon, so there wasn’t much light, but it was still finding shadows anyway. Thus, I wasn’t getting much for pictures until it hopped up onto a log with a wood duck hen and created this scene. The hen objected first, but the merganser wasn’t having it and pushed back quite spectacularly.

Things were much more peaceful at the other end of the pond, but I could still barely believe my eyes when I spotted this giant bull frog just chillin’ up on a log in mid-October.

On shore, even the rabbits were out. It was almost as if the morning rain had kept everyone on hold until I was able to get there to see them.

Finally, I didn’t see any odd ducks on the river today, but I did finally get our first image, such as it is, of a tiny winter wren for the season.

The forecast for tomorrow morning is cool, cloudy, and breezy, but at least it shouldn’t rain, so I can’t wait to see who I find next.

Are they green, or are they blue?

As I suggested yesterday, I did ride down to Lakeshore State Park this morning to join the Milwaukee Birders again. There was a stiff breeze coming off the lake, so thank goodness temps were milder than they’ve been recently.

When I spotted this little cutie, I got all excited because the white-ish bib and collar looked a bit exotic. My excitement was premature, however, because this is just a young white-crowned sparrow, of which we’ve been seeing plenty lately.

Another familiar face, which will soon be gone for the winter, is this northern flicker foraging for bugs in the nooks and crannies of the rocks at the water’s edge.

Someone who we don’t get to see much of in Estabrook, and who was at Lakeshore the last time I visited, is this savannah sparrow.

Similarly, there was one American coot foraging with the mallards, and we last saw one in Estabrook back in April.

The big treat of the day was this small group of female and/or immature male green-winged teals. They do visit Estabrook from time to time, but not as frequently as coots, and our last visitor was back in March.

One interesting new detail, at least for me, is that their green speculum feathers can appear blue if the light hits them right. This caused me a little confusion this morning, and I even wondered if they might be blue-winged teals instead, until I found this duck who was kind enough to demonstrate the effect by simply turning toward me just a bit. “Thanks!” You can even see the feather on the duck behind it and to the left still looks green. Wild!

For comparison, here are two of the diminutive teals, “the smallest dabbling duck in North America,” with four mallards, a drake and three hens, that are nearly twice the size. Also, note how the mallards’ blue wing stripe is always bounded by white, while the teals is not.

We did hear a few pipits as they flew over, and we did look up in time to see them go, but we never did see them land, so I wasn’t able to get a picture for you this time.

On my way home, I was just in time to watch this Cooper’s hawk try for a squirrel and come up empty. It hopped around for a bit trying to convince the squirrel to come out of that tree “just for a second”, but the squirrel was having none of that, and the hawk soon flew off to try again elsewhere.

Finally, I am sorry to report that I will have to miss the wildlife walk in Estabrook Park tomorrow morning, but I understand that it continued just fine without me while I was away before, so come on out if you’re able. Sunrise is now after 7am, which will probably put a damper on the 7am start, so I recommend giving the sun time to rise and reverting to the original 8am start time. Obviously, if some diehards want to start at 7am anyway, I won’t be there to stop them.

Quite the mixed bag…

“Second Weekends are State Park Weekends” for the Milwaukee Birders, and since things had been quiet at Estabrook for the past couple of days, I thought I’d join them at Havenwoods State Forest this morning. They didn’t start until 8:30, however, so I stopped by Estabrook on my way, just to see what I’d be missing.

I met a young deer and his mom atop the bluff at the north end, and I could tell he was a he because he’s sporting the first inkling of antlers.

The bigger surprise for me, and perhaps for her, was when he tried to nurse. I don’t know if she’s just done with that, or she didn’t need some old dude taking pictures, but she didn’t let that last long.

Down on the water, the pair of killdeer are still with us, and this one struck the nicer pose.

I was more excited to see an odd duck back out on the water with the mallards, and this time it was a wigeon again.

The biggest surprise of the morning had to be this healthy-looking raccoon ambling around on the exposed river bottom and appearing to be looking for something to eat.

Then I had to hustle off to Havenwoods to make the 8:30 start, and by then the sun was up, the sky was clear, and it was a beautiful day for a stroll around the grounds. The kestrels, orchard orioles, marsh wrens, and meadowlarks appear to have all flown south for the winter already, but there were a few hardy souls stuck or preparing to stick it out, and this young red squirrel is definitely in the former and hopefully in the latter as well.

I don’t believe this young cedar waxwing is stuck, but I guess if you don’t instinctively migrate, you might as well be stuck, so we should get to see them all winter long, from time to time. I read that they don’t stash fruit for the winter, as we just saw a red-bellied woodpecker do, so I guess they don’t do much if anything to prepare for the winter and are just good at foraging instead.

Finally, we did glimpse a couple of larger butterflies, but they refused to sit still for a second, so here’s one more clouded sulpher and our first butterfly an New England aster of the fall.

Since it is so nice to meet up with the Milwaukee Birders, I plan to join them again at Lakefront State Park tomorrow morning. I see that pipits and longspurs have been spotted there this month, so here’s hoping I find something interesting.

A surprise late season appearance…

Well, we finally won the trifecta of poor October weather for a walk in Estabrook Park this morning. It was cool, which isn’t necessarily a negative by itself, but it was also breezy and rainy. The bright side is that I pretty much had the place to myself, which is a nice treat once in a while.

Despite the suboptimal weather, things got off to an exciting start when I heard and then saw a pair of red-tailed hawks in the WITI TV tower as soon as I crossed the Oak Leaf Trail. This is the best shot they let me have of the two of them together, and if I had to guess, based on their behavior, one was a youngster crying to be fed, and the other was a parent trying to coax its youngster into getting its own darn breakfast for a change.

I did not anticipate getting a lot of bird pictures today, so when I saw the grebe still on the pond, I thought that one more look at this little cutie couldn’t hurt.

The biggest treat of the day came at the river between the islands. The flood we had a while back left quite a mess there, and the small trail along the water that I often used to take has been blocked, so there is still a lot of trash to collect. Today I had brought a large, heavy-duty bag, so I was really going to town, and when I picked up one large piece of plastic that the rushing water had plastered against a clump of logs and branches, I could not believe my eyes. Look who I found using the plastic for cover: our first snake of the year, a DeKays brown snake, and only my third ever live snake sighting in Estabrook. Holy Macanoli!

As I may have already mentioned, it was cool out, so the poor thing could barely move, and I didn’t want to leave it just exposed like that, so I warmed it up in my hands until I could feel it really starting to wriggle, and then I let it go find a better place to hid in that clump of logs and branches. “See you in the spring, Sweetie, I hope!”

After savoring the moment for a while, I pressed on to the meadow. Cooper’s hawks have become pretty regular at the north end lately, even if I don’t always get a picture, and this morning I was greeted briefly by this mature one sporting a bit of jewelry.

With only four serviceable pictures today, I finally have space to blow on showing you this striking moth I saw by the beer garden back on October 3: our ever first maple spanworm moth (Ennomos magnaria).

Finally, I may not have seen a single insect today, so here’s one more look at a monarch on a Mexican sunflower blossom by the pollinator garden from October 5.

I see that clear skies are due to return overnight, so maybe we’ll get to see the sun tomorrow morning. Keep your fingers crossed!

A disturbance in the force…

The weather this morning in Estabrook Park was more similar to yesterday’s than the forecast had led me to expect. The air was mostly still, and the sky was pretty clear, but sunrise temps were in the low 40s. Brrrr. I could see my breath.

The main star of the show today was this youngish bald eagle on the river between the two islands. The color of its head plumage suggests that it is about 3-4 years old, but the other birds who might normally be on the water, such as the gadwall, wigeon, killdeer, or snipes, appeared to treat it as “fully armed and operational”, because there was no sign of any of them. The original version of this image isn’t the greatest, but it’s a lot better than the rendering WordPress appears ready to send you, so if you want to zoom in to see what color eyes this eagle has, you know what to do.

I didn’t see a single warbler today, which doesn’t mean they’re all gone yet, but if there are any left, they might have been waiting for the sun to warm things up a bit. Luckily, more migrants keep arriving to make the show go on, for now, and here’s our first Lincoln’s sparrow of the season.

When I spotted this pretty little bird, I got equally excited because I thought that pink-looking-beak meant it was our first field sparrow of the season, but now I’m not so sure. The light brown stripe projecting from the back of the eye suggests that it could be a very pale immature white-crowned sparrow. We’ll have to see what the experts say when they weigh in.

At least I had no trouble identifying this red-bellied woodpecker, though I could have used a little better look at the head to see if it has a male’s red crown or only a female’s red nape. The interesting detail for me, however, is that I watched it make at least 6 trips from a nearby berry bush to this dead ash trunk to stash away berries, because I had no idea they did that.

Here it is just about to stuff that berry into a crack in the bark. I have seen them sip sap from trees during the winter, and Tom shared that amazing picture of one pulling a bat out from behind a flap of bark, but this behavior is a new one for me. Ha!

And here it is with just the tip of its tongue sticking out. What a clever bird.

Finally, I didn’t see a single butterfly today, so here’s that clouded sulpher I saw yesterday.

The forecast for tomorrow morning is cool, cloudy, and breezy, so I wonder who will be out and about.

Autumn doubles down…

Man, if I thought yesterday’s cool weather marked the return of fall, the cold air this morning in Estabrook Park really cemented it. Yikes! I had to break out a poofy coat, and I wished I had also opted for gloves during the first hour or so.

There were still plenty of kinglets foraging in the trees today, but I only saw two warblers, total. There was a yellow-rumped by the river at the north end, but before I got that far upstream, I heard this puffed-up northern waterthrush foraging at the water’s edge.

A bit farther upstream, but still short of the meadow, I found our first fox sparrow of the fall. I didn’t dare move to reduce some of that backlighting, and I might not have had a shot anyway, even if the bird didn’t also move, so this is the image we’re stuck with. Don’t bother viewing it in flickr, because the full-resolution version is no better, alas.

There were at least two Cooper’s hawks, again, at the meadow, and at least one of them was calling. This one looks mature, and the other one looked like a youngster, but this was the best image, and you may find it worth your while to view the full-resolution version on flickr.

As if a couple of Cooper’s wasn’t enough, the osprey was also busy fishing, and it even perched over our riverbank a couple of times. You may enjoy a zoom in on this image, too.

The first big surprise of the day, however, came out on the water where I found another “odd duck” dabbling amongst the mallards. I didn’t see any signs of the gadwall, so today the role was played instead by our first American widgeon of the season. By amazing coincidence, a wigeon first appeared last fall on October 6. How’s that for timing?!?!

As I walked down the old boat ramp in hopes of a better wigeon picture, I inadvertently spooked two dark, robin-sized birds that had been foraging on the exposed river bottom. Happily, they didn’t go far, must have been quite hungry, and were soon back at it. Give a warm welcome to our first rusty blackbirds of the season. One granted us a much nicer portrait last October, so here’s hoping we get so lucky again.

The biggest surprise of the morning came as I waited for the blackbirds to come back out of hiding. I had heard and seen at least one killdeer, so when I saw a pair of small shorebird wings, I thought at first it was just the killdeer flitting around. Things got a whole lot more exciting when it landed, however, and I realized it was our first Wilson’s snipe of the year, and only our third Wilson’s snipe sighting ever in Estabrook. Even better, there were two of them, but they did a good job of preventing me from getting a picture of them together. Maybe next time.

Finally, on my way back south, this little bird caught my eye, mostly because it wasn’t darting for cover as the white-throated sparrows and dark-eyed juncos have been doing since they arrived. Once I had a nicely over-exposed picture to show us the details on its dark side, that big white eyebrow tipped me off that this was our first purple finch of the season, and a female or immature one with brown streaks instead of the raspberry-red wash that the males sport.

Lastly, I didn’t see a single monarch, on the Mexican sunflowers or otherwise, but there were a couple of other butterflies out and keeping low to the ground: a bunch of clouded sulphers and this one fiery skipper.

The forecast calls for a tad more warmth and a lot more clouds tomorrow morning, but the air should be nearly still, at least for the first couple of hours after sunrise, so I can’t wait to see who we find next!

Autumn returns…

It looks pretty nice out now, if a lot cooler than yesterday, but it was raining lightly when I woke up this morning, so it appears that our recent run of sunny, summer weather in Estabrook Park has finally come to an end. Given the cloud cover, I was thrilled that I was able to catch a glimpse of the Harvest Supermoon before it set behind the old American Lace Paper Company Factory Building on Port Washington Road. Ah yup, that’s a biggun.

My next treat was spotting our first red-tailed hawk of the month. Too bad it couldn’t stick around until the blue sky arrived, but those squirrels ain’t gonna catch themselves.

It was great to see the wood ducks and pied-billed grebe still on the pond, and since we don’t often get grebes there, here’s one more picture while they’re available.

The treats just kept coming this morning, and this one was standing on the downstream island staring at me as I tried to get a presentable heron picture.

I had hardly walked 20 feet farther upstream when I noticed the buck with asymmetrical antlers keeping tabs on me, too. I suspect he’s the same one we saw at the south end back in August when his antlers were still fuzzy.

The biggest treat of all, however, came beside the upstream island as I counted the mallards. As happens once in a blue moon, despite the fact that last night’s moon definitely wasn’t blue, there was an “odd” duck dabbling amongst the mallards, and this one is our first gadwall since last December! Woo Hoo!

Finally, it was too cool for pretty bugs this morning, and I didn’t see a single dragonfly or butterfly. Luckily, the monarchs have been going crazy on the Mexican sunflowers lately, so here’s one of the pictures I kept in my back pocket so I could show you some other pretty critter that day instead.

Lastly, I’m soon off to give my “class” at North Shore School for Seniors this afternoon, so maybe I’ll see you there.

A few more stragglers…

It has mostly clouded up now, as I write this, but the nice weather we’ve been enjoying in Estabrook Park was still pretty much holding this morning for our Weekly Wildlife Walk. Three folks met me for the 7am start, and another four joined us at 8am.

Our first treat came early when we spotted this little flycatcher busily hunting high over the field just northwest of the beer garden. We had just seen a phoebe at the pond, so that was our first guess, but it was hunting much higher than I’ve ever seen phoebes. The current consensus among my sources is that this is a late (thus “rare”) wood-pewee. Now we’re just waiting for the fine folks at ebird.org, where we log our sightings, to confirm.

Our next big treat came at the river, across from the upstream island, when an osprey flew by with a big fish in tow and perched on a bare branch just a bit upstream of us. Luckily, two of the 8-amers had already joined us by then, so they got to see it, too. As a consolation, I suppose, the second two spotted a groundhog, which I have only managed to see twice in the park, on their way to joining us at the north end.

With all eight of us assembled, we headed back south and found a bonanza of brown creepers, a couple of black-and-white warblers, and a few ruby-crowned kinglets having a feeding frenzy right near where we had seen the wood-pewee. Here’s one of the warblers, …

and here’s one of the kinglets. I don’t mean to sound like a whiner, but the WordPress renderings of all these pictures doesn’t match what I see on flickr, so if you want to enjoy the full effect, you know what to do. Plus, you only need to click on one image, or this link, and then you can scroll through all of them on flickr.

When we got back to the parking lot, some of the 8-amers, who had arrived after we had already visited the pond, wanted to see the yawning grebe, so we headed over for seconds. The grebe was indeed there, as were a dozen or more wood ducks, but it wasn’t until everyone left, and I stuck around to try for another nice grebe portrait, that it had some luck rustling up some breakfast. Here it is with a nice big crayfish, …

and here it is with that crayfish mostly down its throat tail first. Wow! Don’t try this at home, kids! Perhaps that yawn wasn’t out of sleepiness, but instead was more like an athlete’s stretch before the big event.

Now, for the insect portion of our program. Just as we were wrapping up with the creepers, warblers, and kinglets, I spotted what will probably be our last black saddlebags dragonfly of the season. As soon as I saw it approach one of the fruit trees by the parking lot, I began chanting to myself “land, land, oh please, land.” And then, miracle of miracles, it actually did.

Finally, as I was taking yet one more picture of a sunlixt monarch butterfly on a Mexican sunflower blossom with a little blue sky for a background, yet another late season surprise, this gorgeous buckeye, flew in and landed at knee level on some black-eyed susans.

Lastly, Lisa was kind enough to forward me a picture she snuck of us all trying to ID some tiny bird.

The warblers ain’t done with us yet…

It was a fine day for an October farmers’ market in Estabrook Park, but the beautiful weather we’ve been enjoying lately has started to fray a bit. I’m sure few folks mind backing off on the heat some, but I was a little bummed to see the still air go.

Anyway, the wood duck drake at the pond has doubled his entourage from two to four hens. It’s amazing what a sharp-looking suit can do.

The pied-billed grebe is still there, but maybe this yawn suggests that it’s starting to get a little bored with pond life.

The big surprise for me, however, was the number of warblers in the park today. In addition to the yellowthroat, palm, and yellow-rumped warblers we’ve been seeing lately, here’s our first orange-crowned of the season with a beak full of caterpillar. Yum!

Here’s a black-throated green wishing he had the same.

I heard this one before I saw it, and immediately thought that it was a red-eyed vireo chasing after the ones who had been here but are now long gone. The song wasn’t quite the same, however, and that’s because this is our first blue-headed vireo of the season, instead.

While the warblers, vireos, and most of the sparrows are just passing through, this little cutie, our first dark-eyed junco of the season, has just arrived at its home for the winter. “Welcome! We hope you enjoy your stay.”

The warm weather even brought out some dragonflies, and here’s a common green darner parked for a moment in the sun at the pollinator garden.

There were also a few monarchs on the Mexican sunflowers again, but to avoid over exposure, here’s another clouded sulpher on aster blossoms.

The forecast for tomorrow morning looks about the same as today, so the viewing should be pretty good, and I wonder who we’ll see next.