There was a stiff breeze out of the northeast this morning, which reminded me, and anyone else out in it, just how cold the waters of Lake Michigan still are. The windchill temperature was supposed to be 31°F at sunrise. Yikes!
Luckily for our resident eastern screech-owl, the opening of its nook faces the southwest, so it might have felt as snug as a bug in a rug.
The sky was nice and clear, though, and the sun is pretty warm this time of year, so if you could find a sunny spot that was out of the wind, such as our riverbank at the north end, it felt quite comfortable. Perhaps that’s what this American redstart, our first of the year, was singing about.
Another new arrival who had found a similar spot was this male rose-breasted grosbeak.
As did this Nashville warbler, of which I’ve seen a few already, but who haven’t let me get a nice picture until today.
Goslings hatched beside the river have the advantage of automatically being out of the cold wind, at least for today, and here’s one of several broods I saw. The ones at the pond are still doing fine and are already nearly twice this size.
Even the Baltimore orioles, who usually keep to the treetops, were down near eye-level for a change.
Finally, your blossoms of the day are these elegantly understated prairie trilliums, aka toadshades, but it was way to cold for toads today.
Lastly, the forecast for tomorrow looks similar to today, except that the winds are supposed to be 2 mph instead of 12 mph. Woo hoo!
It has gotten cool and breezy now, but earlier today the weather was as nice in Estabrook as yesterday, so I was crossing the Oak Leaf Trail into the park just after 5:30 a.m. There’s a guy who likes to let his German shepherd run loose on the soccer fields, and some days I get there before they do, and some days they’re already gone before I arrive, but today they were just a couple hundred feet in front of me.
I’d rather not tangle with a loose dog, especially one that I’ve seen act aggressively before, and I don’t expect to see much wildlife in their vicinity anyway, so I cut straight north along the parkway, and it turns out I may not be the only one who’d rather avoid them, because here are a couple of deer hustling across the parkway to get to the quieter side.
I could tell that yesterday was a nice, warm day because the path down to the river was loaded with tiny silk threads left at eye level by various tiny critters for the first time this year, which is always a treat, and the riverbank, which I had just picked up yesterday morning, was littered with fresh fishing line, other tackle, and empty bait containers. I was fewer than thrilled about that.
As I went about collecting the latter, I came across this robin tangled in some line that was also tangled in some low brush. Luckily, after the gosling incident, I keep a pair of tiny safety shears in my camera harness, and I was able to free it pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the bird managed to free itself from my grasp before I could finish getting all the line off its left ankle, which you can just make out in the image below. I’m sure it wasn’t tied in a knot, so let’s hope that now, without any tension to keep it on, it will just come loose and fall off. Dang.
Anyway, as I bent down to pick up the line I had just cut off the robin, look who I found hiding in the grass just off the trail, our first amphibian of the year, an American toad. Yay! Even better, at the north end I could hear that a few of them had started singing. Fantastic!
The trees beside the river at the north end were full of warblers, but they kept up high, and none of them appeared interested in getting their portrait taken today. Instead, this quartet of hungry, lesser yellowlegs did quite a nice job of posing for my camera on an exposed mud flat beside the upstream island.
In addition to the first amphibian, I also saw my first vireo of the year, this gorgeous blue-headed vireo, who was kind, or bold, enough to perch right at my eye level.
Lastly, your blossoms of the day are these beautiful large white trilliums, which are open in various places throughout the park.
PS: Sorry about the venting above. I am usually able to let that stuff go, at least by the time I write my post, but the two situations in quick succession really stuck with me today. Yeah, I know it’s an urban park and not some remote wildlife refuge, but I still wish park goers would follow the few rules we do have and be considerate of other park users and denizens. Where’s the “live and let live” in chasing deer and literally trapping birds in accidental snares?
What a difference 24 hours can make. Yesterday morning, I wore a poofy coat for warmth, and I was glad I did. This morning, I wore only a windbreaker over a thin fleece, and I had to strip it off before I got home.
The critters in Estabrook Park really seemed to respond to the warmth as well, and here are the seven goslings on the west lawn by the pond napping without Mom keeping them warm. Instead, she was busy preening, along with Dad, just out of frame.
Meanwhile, I spotted my first river goslings of the year, four separate broods, in fact, and here’s one that just hopped off the downstream island with eleven!
Near the catbird, but a lot higher in a tree was a legit new arrival for the year, our first indigo bunting. I had heard their song as soon as I reached the islands in the river, but it took me to the upstream end of the upstream island to finally lay eyes on one.
Despite being back in Milwaukee yesterday, I had one more stop to make before going back to Estabrook Park this morning. The Milwaukee Birders were visiting the Shorewood Nature Preserve yesterday morning, and I couldn’t really let them bird my back yard without saying “hi”, now could I? Plus, it gave me a chance to see my very first Forsters’s tern (Sterna forsteri) and take this fuzzy picture of it. I also got my first Caspian tern picture, but it wasn’t as nice.
Meanwhile, back on shore, our first Swainson’s thrush of the season was foraging on a gorgeous bed of moss.
When I finally did get back into Estabrook this morning, the clouds were thick, the breeze wasn’t too strong, and it didn’t rain. The first photogenic sight I saw was our first robin’s egg of the season. Hurray!
At the river, a great horned owl was in its old usual spot on the downstream island. The screech was in, too, but its picture came out about as nice as the Caspian terns’.
And our first solitary sandpiper of the year was foraging on the exposed river bottom beside the upstream island. “Welcome back, Sweetie!”
Below the falls, a killdeer was back on our side of the river for the first time since the start of April.
At the pond, all seven goslings looked hale and hearty, and here they are down for their morning nap.
Finally, your blossoms of the day are these Virginia strawberries. “Yum!”
There were also several verdins around, and this one was too busy singing to worry about li’l ol’ me for a change.
The highlight of the morning, however, was finally getting eyes on what ended up being a whole flock of Gambel’s quail. I had seen them before, but my sister hadn’t, so we followed their calls several times in hopes of a glimpse, and it finally paid off.
Then we drove to Vegas to catch our flights, my sister flew home, and Spirit Airlines took me to Orlando. Even better, they let me have 5+ hours of layover, so I had time to look up the nearest park with a water feature and get an Uber driver to take me there. It was the lovely Airport Lakes Park, and it was just 2 miles away from the terminal, as the crow flies, but I’m not a crow, and I’ve learned that Florida does not like me walking on their highways.
Anyway, as soon as I entered the park, I could hear the familiar call of an Osprey, and it didn’t take me long to find the source. Here it is, high atop the lights over the soccer field feeding its chicks.
The park does not provide much access to Lake Warren, which it abuts, other than a pier which is currently closed because of “storm damage,” but looks more like it has simply been out in the elements for a few years without much if any maintenance. Luckily, it seems that I am not the first person to arrive at that conclusion, so side access was pretty easy to find, and my reward for that little bit of rule-breaking was my first glimpse of an anhinga since Brazil. I read that “the word anhinga comes from a’ñinga in the Brazilian Tupi language and means ‘devil bird’ or ‘snake bird’,” so I guess it is fitting that I saw one there first.
I finally made it home safely this afternoon, but on my way from Las Vegas to Milwaukee, Spirit Airlines was kind enough to gift me a morning of birding in Orlando, Florida, of all places. I don’t have time right now to go into all the details, nor show you all I saw, but I can at least show you this one stunning creature, my very first white ibis (Eudocimus albus). How amazing is that?
That’s all for now, and I’ll have plenty more to show you soon.
My sister and I do plan on going out to look for wildlife one more time tomorrow morning, here in scenic Washington, Utah, but even if we find something amazing, I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to write it up, so here are a few more sights from Utah that I haven’t had room to show you yet.
I’ve been seeing Say’s phoebes all trip, but it wasn’t until we were just about to leave Bryce Canyon that this beauty finally let me have a nice picture.
Another bird that’s been showing up since the Grand Canyon is the Steller’s jay, but once again, I failed to get a nice picture until this one in Bryce Canyon.
Zion was the most crowded park we visited on this trip, based on the ratio of cars to parking spaces, but we had the luck we needed where it counted, thankfully. The weather was nice, the scenery was beautiful, and the critters were bountiful.
On the other side of the path, I was thrilled when a Anna’s hummingbird kept coming back to the same perch to give me more chances of a decent picture. We have seen one before in Sedona, but that was a female or immature male, and this handsome devil is an adult male in all his breeding finery.
There were yellow butterflies around, and they appeared to be tiger swallowtails, but I never saw one land. Fortunately, this yucca giant skipper (Megathymus yuccae) was happy to sun on a rock in the Virgin river at the north end of the valley.
We had heard one earlier in the morning as we looked for birds along the stream that ran behind our motel, but we had failed to lay eyes on it. So I was checking nearly every rock in the Virgin River, in hopes of getting my first glance, but it was my sister who found this amazing creature first. What a treat!
In case you are video averse, here’s a still image of it diving in headfirst.
After Arches National Park yesterday, we stayed overnight in the tiny town of Loa, Utah, and this morning, before the kids got up, my sister and I went out to see who might be around. It was below freezing, for the first time this trip, at sunrise, and it took a while for the local critters to get going, but once they did, they put on a nice show for us.
Then it was time to get some breakfast and drive down to Bryce Canyon National Park. On the way, we were passing by a large body of water, Otter Creek Reservoir, and I was trying to make out the birds on the water, when my sister pointed out two large birds in the air, which looked for all the world like pelicans. Wow!
So, we stopped when the road got close to the water, and I hopped out. Sure enough there were a few American white pelicans on the water, which we’ve seen before at Kohler-Andrae State Park. Instead, the bigger surprise was our very first western grebes (Aechmophorus occidentalis). What amazing beauties!
Even better, there were a few common loons (Gavia immer), which look anything but common. I once glimpsed them from afar on a canoe trip decades ago, but I’ve never had a chance to photograph one until today. Outstanding!
We eventually had to get back on the road, but the thrills weren’t over yet because just before we rolled into Bryce Canyon City, this darling pronghorn was standing beside the road. Thankfully, my sister, who was driving at the time, saw it first and had the wherewithal to pull over quickly so I could get you this picture. “Thanks, Deb!”
After Antelope Canyon yesterday, my sister said “we’ve come all this way, we might as well see Utah, too,” so we drove up to Monticello yesterday afternoon to stay on the outskirts of town in a geodesic dome under a very dark and very stary sky. Not surprisingly, it was quite cold this morning, but the clear skies also let the sun warm things up quickly.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 