We had a nearly-flawless day of travel yesterday, arrived home around 9:30 last evening, and I was able to get back into Estabrook Park early this morning after a pretty good night’s sleep. So, yay! The weather today, on the other hand, was cloudy, cool, and breezy, which isn’t my favorite, and perhaps partially due to Canadian wildfire smoke, but at least it wasn’t raining. So, yay again!

It appears that spring migration has pretty much wrapped up while I was away, and I don’t believe I saw a single bird that still has some more traveling left to do. Luckily, we’re well within the breeding range of yellow warblers, so a few may stick around all summer, and here’s one I found singing by the pond.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I found our female ruby-throated hummingbird still on her nest.

The mallard ducklings have gotten bigger, and here are five, out of eight total, out for breakfast on the river with their mom.

I thought I might have missed snapping-turtle-egg-laying-season, but perhaps the cool spring has held things back a bit, because here’s one trying its best to dig into the gravel beside the river at the north end.

As I’ve learned in the past, it’s just best not to mess with the determination on that face.

The ducklings aren’t the only youngsters growing up, and here are a gaggle of goslings already starting to get their adult plumage in.

I thought I spotted some cliff swallows hunting over the river, along with the northern rough-winged swallows and some tree swallows, so I hiked across the Port Washington Road bridge to check their nests on the south-west side of the Holliday Inn, and sure enough, here’s a swallow appearing to add a dab of mud to one of the nests.

And here’s a second one, at a different nest, appearing to inspect the progress.

Back on our side of the river and on my way south, I found this red squirrel who appeared to be in no hurry to go anywhere.

Finally, when I checked the weeds that grow along the west side of the soccer fields at the south end, I found our first skipper of the year, a Peck’s, as it perched on what appears to be lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea) and perhaps tried to soak up what sun it could.

The forecast for tomorrow calls for about more of the same, with maybe a little less breeze, but still no rain, so here’s hoping that I can find as much to show you as I found today.

While I’m busy sitting in plane seats all day, here are just a couple more pictures from the trip that I haven’t shown you yet.

I mentioned yesterday that a Eurasian blackcap let me get its picture two days in a row, and here’s the picture from the second day.

Nearly as common as the blackcap, which I heard all the way across Europe, and possibly even harder to spot, is the common chiffchaff, but this one yesterday morning finally relented.

Also about as hard to spot as the previous two, but much less seldomly heard, at least by me, was this darling little Eurasian wren.

And that’s a wrap on the little, hard-to-spot birds in shades of brown and grey that I found in Prague. With any luck, I’ll be looking for their North American counterparts tomorrow morning in Estabrook Park.

We had a nice train ride to Prague yesterday, a great dinner out, and this morning I got up good-and-early to see what critters might be around. I was happy to find that there is a big park on a hill just to the west of downtown, called Petřín Hill, and similar to the one I found in Ljubljana.

I’ve seen a few great spotted woodpeckers this trip, but this one was so busy searching high and low for something to eat that it hardly paid me no never mind, and I could finally get a picture to show you.

I’ve also glimpsed a couple of Eurasian jays, but this one lingered for just the extra second I needed to sneak this picture through the pine needles.

I’ve shown you a couple of Eurasian green woodpecker pictures before, but I had only heard one so far on this trip, so I was thrilled to find this one posing like a rock star in the sun for me.

Finally, I’ve glimpsed a common redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) or two before, but I’ve never managed to capture an image, so I was especially grateful to this handsome little devil for letting me take his portrait while he sang his morning song.

Now it’s time for dinner, and my traveling companions are waiting for me, so I’ve gotta let you go, but before I do, wish me good luck for tomorrow morning, which will be my last outing before we start our long journey home.

Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind being on my way home right now, and while we are technically moving in that direction, we’ve got one more stop to make because it would be a crying shame to come all this way and not stop in to visit the “the historical capital of Bohemia,” which my two buddies from Milwaukee have not yet had to pleasure of seeing. Thus, we’ll be catching the train to Prague in a couple of hours, and I won’t have time to look for more Polish wildlife this morning. As luck would have it, however, I’ve still got a few pictures from Germany and London that I never got to show you, so here we go.

In Germany, we stayed in a nice old inn on the outskirts of town, which was surrounded by forests, and we didn’t yet realize that the fuel line in one of the vehicles had developed a leak, so we thought we had plenty of time and planned on a nice leisurely start to the day.

My first momentary poser was this stunning hawfinch, which I’ve only photographed once before, and that was in Riga, Latvia at the end of last summer.

Then this equally gorgeous European goldfinch horned in on the act.

The nicest surprise for me, however, was getting to see my very first mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus), hopping around on a big lawn just as the description predicts.

Okay. If you are a birding purist, you probably should stop reading now because I’m gonna show a couple more pictures from that menagerie I stumbled upon in St. James’s Park, London.

Here’s a common pochard, of which I did get one poorly-lit picture when I visited the coast in South Holland, so I wasn’t too surprised to find one on a pond in London.

Here’s a red-breasted goose (Branta ruficollis), which “breeds on the high arctic tundra … and winters mainly by the Black Sea,” so a long-distance migrant, and London is not completely out of the realm of possibility.

Finally, here’s a black swan (Cygnus atratus), “which breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia,” and there’s no way in heck it got to London on its own. Dang.

I’ll be looking for some Czech beauties to show you tomorrow, so wish me luck!

I thought I’d be able to take some nice pictures and post them for you on this trip, as I’ve done on so many trips before, but this trip is unlike any trip I’ve ever taken, and now that we’ve been successful, I can tell you why.

This time, the purpose of the trip has been to drive donated vehicles from London to L’viv Ukraine, which the Ukrainian people will then use to help in their effort to repel the Russian invasion. Given the situation, we all figured that the less we said about it beforehand, the better.

So, since we arrived in London last week, five of my best buddies and I took three days to drive 1200 miles across Europe in three pickups and an SUV, and I just haven’t had much time for anything else.

Now, I know that 400 miles per day might not sound like too much, but there was something every day that soaked up a few extra hours: taking the ferry across the channel, shopping unsuccessfully for a part and eventually just jury-rigging a fuel line repair, crossing the border between Poland and Ukraine, etc., etc.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, we have made it, without any tickets, scratches, or dents, and we are now taking the scenic route home, so I have a hope of finally getting some pictures for you soon.

Thank you for your patience, and Слава Україні!

We had some car trouble today, so arrived at our hotel, in Poland, a good four hours later than planned, and this will not be the post I had hoped to write.

I did see some nice birds in Germany this morning, including a blue tit, which I failed to capture on film, and a lifer, of which I do have pictures, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.

Till then, wish us better luck with the cars!

The first stop of this new adventure is London, and I had some time yesterday afternoon to go out looking for wildlife, as you know I like to do, so here’s a familiar face from my days in South Holland: a European robin.

There are water features here, so we shouldn’t be surprised that I also saw a few Eurasian coots, …

and a grey heron.

This green-winged teal drake is a little bit of a pleasant surprise, however. I did see them in South Holland, but not very often.

There were also a couple of barnacle geese, which I also saw in south Holland, but only once, so real treats.

This next bird threw me for a loop. It’s a great white pelican, and ebird considers them “rare” here, but maybe a few flew in and never left. Right? What a lucky find!

Then it really got weird. Here’s a Hawaiian goose (Branta sandvicensis), which is considered “critically imperiled in United States,” and I highly doubt just flew here.

That’s when I finally saw the signage about the “long tradition of keeping exotic wildfoul that continues to this day.” Thus, seeing these rarities is about the same as seeing lions at the zoo. Dang.

Oh well. They were all fun to see, anyway.