Sorry about not posting yesterday. I did go out, but the winds in Budva were 20 mph and gusting to 40! The only picture I managed to get is a bad one of a chaffinch. Happily, the winds had subsided a bit by this morning and were only gusting to 20, plus there were no clouds in the sky, so I had much better luck today.
Here’s my first Eurasian wren of this trip, who really, really didn’t want to be in any pictures.
Finally, I didn’t recognize this last bird, and I was all excited by the possibility of it being a new species for us, but it turns out to be a dunnock, whom we have seen before in South Holland, but whom I never got to see as clearly as this.
We drove up the Adriatic coast from Shkodër, Albania to the picture-postcard town sea-side of Budva, Montenegro yesterday, and I set out early this morning to see who I could see. There hasn’t been much sun yet this trip, and today definitely did not break that trend.
One of the first birds I spotted, way before there was enough light for my camera, was this bold, curious, or oblivious European robin, who posed nice and still for me. “Good morning, Cutie!”
There were a bunch of common chaffinches foraging in a lawn, and they were far too busy to stand still for a second, but I must have lucked out and caught this one right between hops.
I got all excited when I saw this black-and-white mystery bird, which I was sure I had never seen before. Things got even more exciting when google image search suggested that it was a Nilgiri flycatcher, which has “a very restricted range in the hills of southern India,” or a White-sided Flowerpiercer, which is found only in the Andes of South America. In reality, however, it has turned out just to be the first black redstart of the western male persuasion that I’ve seen. Thus, it appears that all the black redstarts I’ve seen so far have been female. Oh well. Live and learn, eh?
Speaking of female black redstarts, look who gave me one of the nicest poses yet. “Thanks, Sweetie!”
Tomorrow is forecast to be just as cloudy as today, but at least the precipitation should wrap up before dawn, and we’re getting a late start to sight-seeing, so I hope to get another crack at this. Wish me luck!
After Vienna, my next opportunity to take pictures of the local fauna came this morning in Shkodër, “the fifth-most-populous city” of Albania. The sky was dark and rainy this morning, but the air was a heck of a lot warmer than in Estabrook Park, or so I hear, and the Ebu Beker Mosque, across the street from our hotel, is surrounded by nice, garden-like grounds.
The Albania leg of our trip, combined with the weather, didn’t leave a lot of time for taking pictures, but I did get to see my first ever Dalmatian pelicans (Pelecanus crispus) soaring over Rozafa Castle from Lake Shkodër yesterday. Now we are in Budva, Montenegro, on the Adriatic coast for a couple of days, and if the weather cooperates, I should have many more opportunities. I’ll keep you posted.
We made is safely to Austria and took a train into town during our layover. After lunch, when our group broke up to visit various museums, I slipped away to visit Wiener Stadtpark, were I found all kinds of pretty birds.
Here’s an elusive Eurasian blue tit, who just wouldn’t let me get a clear shot.
Here’s a great tit, who wasn’t much more obliging.
There’s a small river, the Wienfluss, that flows right beside the park through town, and here’s a our very first gray wagtail (Motacilla cinerea), who was foraging and wagging its tail along the water’s edge.
There were several Eurasian blackbirds lurking in the bushes, but this one was quite bold and stuck all sorts of interesting poses between picking berries.
There’s a little pond in the park, similar in size and even shape to the pond in Estabrook Park, and here’s a gray heron perched atop an ornamental tree beside the pond to avoid the fray of park goers feeding mallards and gulls on the water below.
Here’s one of the gulls, a diminutive black-headed gull, in its non-breeding plumage and holding its own in that fray.
Finally, here’s a great cormorant also perched above the pond.
If everything goes right, my next post should be from Montenegro, so wish me luck!
As I mentioned yesterday, Anne and I are off to the Balkans, and she got us a nice long layover in Vienna along the way, but I probably won’t have an opportunity to write a post again today, so let me show you a few more critters that I have a hope of seeing on this trip.
They have nuthatches there, and they look a bit like our red-breasted nuthatches, but they call them “Eurasian nuthatches” instead.
They also have treecreepers, who receive the same treatment.
And they have siskins, who are a bit more colorful than ours.
Finally, on the water, they have shelducks, which we do get to see in Wisconsin, but only about as often as we get to see wagtails.
With any luck, we’ll finally arrive at a hotel with wifi tomorrow, so I have a hope of showing you what I’ve found so far. Wish me luck!
As I mentioned yesterday, Anne and I are off to the Balkans today. I do have time for a quick visit to Estabrook this morning before we go, but I probably won’t have time to write up what I found, so let me give you a little taste of some of the critters I can hope to see on the trip.
They have robins there, the original “robin”, in fact, but they are not closely related to the ones we have here, not even in the same family, and sized and shaped a lot more like the warblers we have here, so we call them “European robins” to avoid confusion.
It was colder than yesterday in Estabrook Park this morning, with temps in the mid-teens, but the breeze was much lighter, and the clouds were high, thin, and sparce, so the sun was able to take the edge off a bit. Plus, it wasn’t snowing.
At the north end, one pleasant surprise was finding this quintet of common merganser hens, and perhaps they felt some safety in numbers because they were less skittish than the singles or pairs I’ve been seeing so far this winter.
The big surprise, however, was our first pair of common goldeneyes. Woo hoo! I’ve been waiting for weeks, and they are finally here.
After that, I drifted on cloud nine all the way to the pond. There were dozens of house sparrows and house finches, seemingly all chirping at once, but as I searched in vain for a tree, white-throated, or fox sparrow, there was a sudden ruckus on the island, and most of the little birds bolted. The cause was this Cooper’s hawk, who came up empty, and retired to this perch over the near shore. As with the red-tailed hawks on Saturday, you can see, from its dark red eye and lushly barred orange breast, that it’s a mature bird, and I don’t doubt that it will find its breakfast soon enough.
Finally, as I approached the far south end, I was quite surprised to find a beaver up on the ice in this weather. As with the muskrat on Sunday, I thought they waited until a thaw to come out of their burrows to forage for fresh vegetables. At least they’d get fewer icicles on their whiskers that way.
After finishing with that little stick in its paws, it must have had a hankerin’ for something more substantial, and here’s a fun video showing it standing up on its haunches to grab a nice big hunk of bark from that log over its right shoulder.
Here’s a still image, which shows how far it can reach, in case you’re not into video.
Tomorrow, Anne and I head to the Balkans for a little sightseeing. I’ve had some luck there in the past, as you may remember from our trip to Slovenia, so I’ll try to post as I go, but I can’t make any promises.
It was warmer than the past few mornings in Estabrook Park today, with temps in the mid to high 20s, but the wind was really blowing at times, and bands of light snow kept drifting through, so I was thrilled when four intrepid nature enthusiasts joined me for our weekly wildlife walk.
Besides many of the regulars, we spotted a couple of tree sparrows and a white-throated sparrow at the pond and a common merganser hen at the river. When we got back to the parking lot, a couple of crows alerted us to a red-tailed hawk perched high and north of the pond, and I thought that would be a wrap, but three of the four wanted to keep going, so we headed south and toward the river again. That’s when the magic started.
I mentioned to the group that previous groups and I had seen a song sparrow in the grass beside the river from time to time, and this turned out to be one of those times. Even better, the elusive little cutie perched in the open right in front of us, and stayed there long enough for everyone to get a good look. “Thanks, sweetie!”
We looked around a bit more in hopes of spotting a winter wren or the hermit thrush I’ve seen there, but didn’t have any luck, so we headed through the woods back up to the pond. On our way, I saw someone flash overhead and thought, from my brief glimpse, that it might be a woodpecker or a robin, but our luck held, and it parked just beyond the path to pick berries. There I could finally see that it was a hermit thrush instead, whom I haven’t seen since last year. “Welcome back, Cutie!”
That brought our bird count up to 22 species, and by then everyone was ready to go home. Amazingly enough, the red-tailed hawk and the two crows that were trying to convince it to move on were right where we left them, so I headed towards them to see if I could get a picture. Well, four’s a crowd, I guess, and the hawk bugged out with two crows in tow, but it gave them the slip somehow. They continued south, and it came right back to the pond to pose for this picture. The dark red eyes and solid red tail feathers make me think it might be the one we’ve seen at the south end before.
As I walked around the pond in hopes of an even better look, I stopped to enjoy the sight of this hairy woodpecker, who had eluded us earlier. Compare his formidable beak to the relatively diminutive one on the downy woodpecker I showed you yesterday. If I’m trying to decide if a bird I’m looking at is one or the other, I find comparing the beak to the head it is on to be a much better guide than simply trying to decide if I’m looking at the bigger bird or the smaller bird.
By the time I was done with Hairy, the hawk had moved on, so I headed back to the river to make my way home. As I looked around to see if there was anyone else to see, look who I found peeking out of a tree and possibly wondering, “how many dang times is this guy gonna walk by today?!?”
Finally, look who I found lurking in the bushes between the path and the river, our first grey catbird of the new year. “Hello, Darling!” We’ve seen them here in the winter a couple of times before, including just last year on almost the same day, but they’re supposed to be wintering someplace warmer for now, and the folks at ebird consider this a “rare” sighting. Yee haw!
I’ll be away on Monday, the 13th, but I hope some of you’ll come out to see some of these amazing critters without me, and I’ll be back for Monday, the 20th. See you then!
It was about as cold this morning in Estabrook Park as it was yesterday, but the sun struggled to shine through a varying layer of clouds, so there wasn’t much basking going on amongst the critters. For most of them, however, the sun seems to be just a pleasant supplement, and their primary source of warmth comes from the calories they burn. Thus, with fresh seed left by someone in the woods off the northeast corner of the pond, the place was full of little birds.
Here’s a male house sparrow doing its best to conserve the heat put out by the little furnace it has inside.
A nice surprise today was a pair of blue jays who swooped in for a moment.
Many of the finches and sparrows fled when the jays arrived, but this female northern cardinal didn’t even flinch.
I didn’t get a picture of a downy woodpecker today, but I couldn’t resist this scene from yesterday.
I have seen nuthatches picking out seeds by the pond, but I didn’t see this cutie until I was on my way back south along the river.
Finally, the big surprise for today was spotting this muskrat up on the river ice to preen itself at the far south end. Besides that cold-looking red squirrel from yesterday, I’ve hardly seen a mammal since this cold snap started, but this muskrat must have really felt the need to spruce itself up a bit. Temps were in the single digits, and I probably watched it scrub and scratch for a good five minutes before it decided that was good enough and dove back into the water to start swimming upstream. I hope it has a really hot date!
We’re forecast to enjoy a relative heatwave tomorrow, with temps up into the low 20s, so come on out for our weekly wildlife walk if you’re able. As usual, recheck the forecast in the morning, dress for the weather, and I’ll see you there. Oh, and don’t forget to bring the good luck we’re gonna need to spot our first owl of the new year.
The recent freeze in Estabrook Park deepened this morning with temps in the single-digits, and windchills well below 0°F. The skies were clearer than yesterday, on the other hand, and I still don’t see a single cloud this afternoon, so conditions were good for some nice pictures today. Happily, some critters were willing to oblige.
Here’s a white-throated sparrow by the pond who appeared to be as puffed up as possible and singing “the anthem of the boreal forest” to remind itself of warm summer days in Canada.
This dark-eyed junco was too busy foraging to have any time for songs.
There sure as heck weren’t butterflies out today, so I suspect the red-tailed made a try for some warm-blooded breakfast, but it came up empty this time.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 