Yes, we have goslings! I counted eight.

Here’s proud Papa right after chasing away some poor little dog whose owner obliviously walked it waaaay too close.

In other news, check out this hefty kitty…

Here’s an uncommon sight for Estabrook, a rusty blackbird just passing through.

This majestic beauty, a turkey vulture, must have smelled something tasty on the river bank below because I couldn’t believe how close it let me get without budging.

Here’s a herring gull, later in the morning, gobbling down what the vulture didn’t want. It smelled like fish from where I was standing.

Another infrequent visitor this morning was this eastern towhee. It did not stick around for a second shot.

I had been a little bummed that we didn’t get to see any buffleheads this year, and look who finally decided to grace us with their presence just this morning.

Lastly, the American painted ladies are still plentiful, and here’s one sipping nectar from some creeping Charlie blossoms.

For a change of pace today, I joined the Pike Lake/ Hartford Area Field Trip organized by the Noel J. Cutright Bird Club and lead by Carl Schwartz. It was a picture-perfect day, and we stopped at several watering holes along the way. The one on Oil Spring Rd. was a jackpot of ducks and other water birds. Here are a couple pairs of northern shovelers, which we get to see in Estabrook every once in a while.

Here’s a nice row of blue-winged teal drakes, which we see a little more often in Estabrook.

Finally, here’s a terrible picture of a pintail drake, which we do see in Estabrook, about as often as shovelers, but I’ve only seen ones in breeding plumage, when I was in South Holland.

When we finally reached Pike Lake, we found a huge raft of American coots, …

And one “singing” sandhill crane.

We saw a lot of other birds, over 50 species in total, but the trip wasn’t really intended for photography, so that’s it for the pictures I’m afraid. Instead, let me show you a few more pictures from our recent trip to Malawi.

On our last night there, back in Lilongwe, we stayed in a very nice AirBnB, and when I stepped outside at sunrise the next morning, I was thrilled to find a farmer’s field right out front surrounded by trees. That seemed like a perfect place to spot all kinds of critters, and it did not disappoint.

First up is this darling red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio) on the hunt.

The farm field attracted this amazing black-headed heron (Ardea melanocephala).

My one and only hoopoe for the trip flew over a little fence and hopped around on the driveway for a few moments.

My second ever roller, a lilac-breasted roller (Coracias caudatus), perched calmly on this branch all morning, as I walked back and forth, and I could barely make out the color because of the sun almost right behind it, and it kept its feathers all ruffled.

But then a second roller came by for a quick visit, …

and suddenly, it looked all pulled together, although the lighting still wasn’t so great.

Finally, when it was almost time to load up the van and head to the airport, my very first African woodpecker, a cardinal woodpecker (Dendropicos fuscescens), stopped in for a fine sendoff.

That wraps up Malawi, at last, but I still have a few more from Comoros to show you, but they will have to wait for another day.

I didn’t have high hopes for my visit to Estabrook Park this morning. It was cloudy and breezy at sunrise, and neither condition usually makes for great pictures. The critters in the park, however, had other plans.

It all started with this white-tailed deer that I only spotted because I was tiptoeing off trail to pick up a bit of litter that I could see poking through the dead leaves on the ground. She didn’t even budge as I inched toward her, and once I bent down to pick up the piece of plastic, she even resumed munching on the shrubbery. Long-time readers might recall that I spotted my very first deer, almost four years ago, while I was doing the same thing, traipsing off-trail to pick up litter. Ha!

At the pond, the bushes were full of kinglets, and then the sun came out, which really lit things up and finally enabled me to get a decent golden-crowned portrait for the year.

There were even a couple of warblers flitting from branch to branch, and in case any of you are wondering which type this one is, …

it kindly turned around to flash us its namesake “yellow rump.” Ta da! How nice was that?!?

Finally, as I was standing still and holding my camera to my face, a scenario that I’ve hoped for years would occur finally happened. This belted kingfisher landed right in a tree not twenty feet from me, and I didn’t have to startle it by moving or even looking in its direction. Instead, I just slowly rotated my camera toward it and started taking my best kingfisher pictures yet. Yee haw! Oh, and if you are asking yourself, as one does, well is this a male or a female, hold onto your hats, because…

it even turned right around to show us the clean white breast of a male. Unbelievable!

I must have snapped thirty pictures before I figured at least one of them had to be presentable, and then I slowly backed away with my camera still in front of my face, which left the kingfisher undisturbed. Phew! I then slunk off toward the river to see if there was anything else to see.

It turns out, there were plenty of birds to see, and I counted 43 species in total today, but there were no more pictures to be had. Let’s just say that today was a day for quality over quantity.

The warm sun and blue skies were gone, but the temps were still mild, the clouds had no leaks, and the air was nearly still, so it was a fine morning for visiting Estabrook Park. My first treat for the day was getting this yellow-rumped warbler, our first warbler of the season, to hold still for the 125th of a second that my shutter was open.

I was happy to see that we still have some winter wrens around, and I counted three today, but this one seemed surprisingly oblivious to me taking pictures of it from the bridge over the ravine north of the beer garden.

Another recent returner are the hermit thrushes, and I counted three of them as well, all along the path through the woods from the pond down to the river. This one was checking to see if I was going to try taking its picture, and the answer was, “yes, yes I am.”

The female red-winged blackbirds are finally starting to arrive and checking to see which males have staked out suitable territories over the past few weeks.

And the wood ducks continue to sort out who’s gonna be with whom for egg-laying season.

This last image should probably come with a warning for folks who are squeamish about critters whose name rhymes with “Jake”. If you think that might apply to you, maybe don’t scroll down.

All right, now for the biggest news of the day. I’ve been searching for this sight since the first summer of taking these pictures, back in 2020, and I can’t believe that today was finally the day for my dreams to come true. This darling little specimen, about the size of a pencil, appears to be a pale DeKay’s brown snake (Storeria dekayi). I read that they are named after James Ellsworth De Kay, an American zoologist in the early 1800s, and that they primarily feed on slugs, snails, and earthworms.

This is yet another brand-new species for me. How many more can there even be? I found it under a nice flat rock, which I had picked up to put into a muddy patch of the river trail. Once I saw what I had done, however, I knew I had to cover it back up, but I was afraid I might harm it if I just put the rock back down because it was quite heavy, and I would probably never get it into exactly the same place.

Instead, I took a couple of pictures, of course, and then I put the snake in the palm of my hand to warm it up a bit. I put the rock back into place, and once the snake was warm enough to start moving, I let it loose right by the edge of the rock in hopes that it will soon get back home safely. Initial indications were that my plan was working, so I moved on and left it alone.

While Anne and I were off to Illinois to see the total eclipse of the sun, spring really kept springing along in Estabrook Park, and there were a few new faces to see this morning.

First, the ruby-crowned kinglets have returned, and there are also yellow-rumped warblers, but they were less bold this morning.

Butterflies are out, too, and here’s an American painted lady or American lady (Vanessa virginiensis) warming up in the sun. The jury is still out, oddly enough, on whether the ones we see here in Wisconsin have just emerged from hibernation or have just migrated from points south. In various locations, they are known to do both.

And here’s its close cousin a red admiral (Vanessa atalanta), sipping sap from a maple tree. As for whether they hibernate or migrate, they are in the same boat as the American Lady.

Finally, here’s one last bird from our visit to Illinois, a Northern mockingbird, which I’ve seen in Connecticut and Texas, but not yet in Wisconsin.

Anne and I made it to the Rotary Park in Sparta, Illinois without any trouble, and we got to enjoy a full three minutes of totality. It was amazing, but I didn’t bother with pictures, and we just enjoyed it.

Before the big show, however, we also got to watch this Osprey fishing over the Old City Reservoir. What a great opening act.

We didn’t see it have any luck, but at least is was a very nice day for a dip.

Anne and I drove down into Illinois yesterday afternoon in hopes of finding a good location for viewing the eclipse later this afternoon. This morning, I got to go look for birds with my uncle, and we found a few, but I don’t have a lot of time this morning, so here are just a few of the highlights.

The butterflies are already out down here, and so here is a pretty red admiral, the likes of which we’ll be seeing in Estabrook Park soon enough.

A merlin flew in just for a moment.

And titmice are singing from almost every tree it seems.

This morning started out very nice in Estabrook Park, but then the clouds soon rolled in, and we’re now enjoying yet another grey day in April. Oh well. The mergansers and now all the grebes have moved on, but as happy coincidence would have it, I captured my first great blue heron image of the year. It was perched high over the northern island and didn’t stick around long, but if last year is any indication, we’ll soon be seeing plenty of them.

So, back to Africa we go. After my visit to the Lilongwe Wildlife Center, we all went to Elina & Evelyne’s Conference center for a picnic with the family of our host in Malawi. The grounds were nice, and I arrived early, so I had time to wander around and see who lived there.

Here’s my best portrait yet of a male variable sunbird, and this time at eye level with good light and a nice background.

Together with a female, they gave me the very strong impression that they were trying to chase me away from their territory.

Here’s another tawny-flanked prinia, also posing for a portrait.

And picking a fight with his reflection in that window.

Once again, there was a wall around the grounds with a cornfield on the other side, and this time it was a male yellow bishop (Euplectes capensis) protecting his territory.

There was also a male southern masked-weaver (Ploceus velatus)

and he was doing a little maintenance on his nest.

Finally, as I started to lose light, and the rest of the picnickers started to arrive, I found another pair of bulbuls cuddling up for the evening.

What a gorgeous morning we had in Estabrook Park today. With nothing to block the sun, I was able to start my visit at 6:30, which let me beat some of the rush. Plenty of birds were singing, but the first critter to pose for a picture was this red squirrel, busily munching on a nut beside the path from the river to the pond.

The pair of mergansers were gone from the pond, and the wood ducks kept to themselves, so I continued back to the river. There, plenty of brown creepers continue foraging up tree trunks, and this one let us have a nice profile look.

With the horned grebe also gone, the north end was unremarkable, so I turned back south. At the bottom down the bluff from the southern playground, I did find one of the pied-billed grebes again, and here it is.

Finally, back at the south end, I was surprised to find this goldfinch already in his summer finery. All the others I’ve seen so far this year are still wearing their drab winter coats.

Once we got back to Lilongwe, I had a chance to visit the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre while Anne and the team were busy working again. I already showed you a vervet monkey and butterfly from there, so here are the rest of the sights.

First is another Schalow’s turaco, which we already saw in Lilongwe last October, but a little more clearly this time. Man, they are shy birds.

Then a blue monarch, African blue tiger, or dappled monarch butterfly (Tirumala petiverana). I don’t know how “blue” got in the name because all the pictures I can find online show a black butterfly with white spots, just like the one pictured below.

I never saw this creature move, but there were warning signs about Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus) all along the river, and that’s what Google lens identifies it as, so that’s what I’m gonna go with. I kept my distance, but I’d estimate the exposed portion to be about the size of a man.

The reserve was mostly lush, deep forest, and I suppose most of the birds were keeping to the canopy, as was the turaco above, but that left me time to notice the many butterflies closer to the ground, and here’s a soldier pansy or soldier commodore butterfly (Junonia terea) with fancy coloration on the topside/inside and leaf-mimicking camouflage on the underside/outside.

Here are a couple more young vervet monkeys just monkeying around.

Lastly, the brown-veined white butterfly that I already showed you was not the only butterfly on the tall grass along the highway outside the wildlife centre. In fact, it was this blue pansy or dark blue pansy (Junonia oenone), in the same genus as the soldier pansy above, that convinced me to take my camera back out and put it together for one more picture.

The huge storm system, which brought us snow two mornings in a row, has finally moved on, and I can’t see a cloud in the sky right now, but it was still pretty cloudy when I visited Estabrook Park earlier this morning. Happily, there was still enough light to capture this image of our first pied-billed grebe of the season. There were two of them, in fact, but I couldn’t manage a picture of them together. The last time was saw one was back in October.

This pair of red-breasted merganser drakes on the pond, however, just needed a moment to drift into a nice tight formation for me.

When the sun finally did start to poke through the clouds, it was just in time to light up this brown creeper as it took a moment to preen itself.

It appears that the horned grebe has finally moved on, and the belted kingfisher didn’t want to show its face, so that’s all I have from Estabrook for today. There are more pictures from Malawi, however, so let me squeeze a couple more in.

Here’s one of the two African pied wagtails (Motacilla aguimp) that I saw often enough in Jelia Park that they seemed to get used to me. By the last day, I was able to get this nice portrait. We saw a mountain wagtail at Dzalanyama, a western yellow wagtail on the Ackerdijkse Plassen in South Holland, and plenty of white wagtails all over South Holland, but this is my first African pied wagtail. Here’s a nice little video of a wagtail wagging its tail, and all the ones I have seen so far do this.

On our long drive from Tongole Lodge, we passed many fields with corn or just tall grass, and we kept glimpsing dramatic red and black birds perched on the stalks, but it wasn’t until I peeked over the wall surrounding Jelia Park into the neighboring fields that I could start taking pictures of one. They were very shy, and it took me many tries, but here finally is an astounding black-winged bishop (Euplectes hordeaceus)

Finally, here’s another look at a yellow-fronted canary, showing a bit of its namesake yellow front.

That’s finally it for Jelia Park, and the next stop will be back in Lilongwe, from which there are still amazing creatures to see.