Daylight came late yesterday, and the rain came early, so I didn’t have much to show you, and I opted to try again this morning. The sky was dark again today, but the clouds thinned out a bit, and they never leaked, so things went much better.

A single green heron has been hanging out at the pond for a while, and I glimpsed it yesterday, but today it seemed more concerned with drying out than evading my camera.

Better yet, a great blue heron was also at the pond, perhaps because the river is so high, fast, and brown lately, but we haven’t been seeing them at the pond much yet this year.

On my way over to the river, I heard our new buddy again, the red-headed woodpecker.

As I hiked north along the river, I spotted motion in the now-flooded side channel, and I was stunned to see a beaver dragging out a small branch it had just gnawed off some tree. I didn’t have a shot, however, so I high-tailed it up the trail in hopes of catching it where the channel connects to the river, and I arrived just in time. Phew!

Once it got out into the river, it was easier to see the branch it was towing behind.

I watched it through my binoculars as it swam to the northern island, and it climbed up right where we saw one climb up earlier in the month. I sure hope this means it has mouths to feed.

On my way back south, I managed to catch this chipmunk up in a crabapple tree, which I do not get to see very often.

It soon scampered back to earth, however, and joined one of its comrades in munching on the many mulberries littering the ground instead.

Back at the south end, I stopped by the thistles blooming along the west edge of the soccer fields and was thrilled to find our first common buckeye of the season.

There was also our first skipper of the season, this sharp little fiery skipper.

The weeds attract more than just butterflies, and here’s my very first cobra clubtail dragonfly (Gomphurus vastus)

Finally, our second damselfly of the season appears to be my very first familiar bluet (Enallagma civile)

Lastly, the one picture I did get yesterday is of this soaking wet female belted kingfisher on the far side of the pond. She did not look thrilled with me taking her picture.

Morocco sure was amazing, but I’m always glad to get back home, and temps in the mid 70s sure are easier to take than temps in the mid 100s. Besides the mild temps, the sky was clear, and the breeze was light, so it was a perfect morning to get back into Estabrook Park. Better yet, my good lens was waiting for me when I got home yesterday afternoon, and it appears to be working as good as new. Yay!

There were a dozen mallards on the pond, but none looked like a duckling, so let’s hope its mom hiked the one we had been seeing down to the river, or I just didn’t see it this morning. I did see one wood duck duckling and three hens, and I’m guessing the hen that duckling followed up onto a log is its mom.

At the river, I heard the now-somewhat-familiar sound of a red-headed woodpecker, and I eventually found it high over the southern island. I still have my fingers crossed that a pair will expand their range into Estabrook so that we can see them more regularly.

While I was hunting for the woodpecker, this grey squirrel on our side of the river, who was probably a youngster based on its behavior, seemed fascinated by me, and kept creeping closer for a better look. It got so close that I had to zoom out to get this picture.

Over the meadow at the north end, a Cooper’s hawk was soaring amongst the swallows and swifts as though it thought it might catch one, but I didn’t see it have any luck, and it eventually drifted east.

Meanwhile, at the north end of the meadow, this male indigo bunting was alternately singing and picking seeds out of the seedhead it is holding in its right claw.

After a few sightings earlier in the spring, the northern rough-winged swallows seemed to disappear for a while, but they were back big-time today. Perhaps all the nestlings are now fledglings.

Back at the south end, the big patch of weeds along the west side of the soccer fields is now full of blossoming thistle, which is attracting plenty of bugs, but here’s a female twelve-spotted skimmer, perched on a burdock burr from last summer, who might be just there for the warm sun.

The birch tree that stands in the middle of the patch regularly attracts house wrens, indigo buntings, and song sparrows. This is one of the latter.

And like the bunting above, my presence did not interrupt its singing.

Finally, the bugs on the flowers included this red admiral, …

this painted lady, …

and this bicolored striped sweat bee, the “official bee” of Toronto.

I mentioned cattle egrets when I showed you the glossy ibises we saw in Casablanca, and they are one of the most ubiquitous birds I’ve seen on this trip. In Meknes, when I went up to the rooftop to count birds in the morning and would see maybe a couple dozen storks flying over, I would also see at least five times that many cattle egrets. It was in Tétouan, however, when I got close enough for a decent picture. Here’s one perched on a wall behind the big fish market, …

and here’s a tree overflowing with them just down the hill a bit from that wall. I didn’t see any signs of nesting there and doubt there would be. Instead, they seem to like each other’s company, and that was a convenient location near the fish market from which they probably can get some tasty scraps.

We’re in Marrakesh now, and we did come by train, but we didn’t take the Express, so we had a nice leisurely ride watching the countryside turn from “hot-summer Mediterranean“, with rolling hills covered in olive trees with fields ready for haying, to “hot desert,” with not much growing at all, and it hit 105°F for our camel ride yesterday afternoon. There are still plenty of birds around, despite the climate, and here’s my latest attempt at getting a house bunting portrait from the rooftop of our new riad.

Finally, the common bulbuls have gone from “quite infrequent” in the north, to “pretty common” around here, and this is a pair posing the way I often get to see bulbuls do.

We’re taking the train to Fes today, so who knows what wildlife pictures, if any, I’ll be able to get, but here are a few left over from previous days. This first one isn’t very pretty, but I was still glad to get it. I’d been seeing large black birds flying in groups for days, and thought they were cormorants until I watched a group land in a dry field, which I can’t imagine cormorants ever doing. Well, that’s because these are glossy ibises (Plegadis falcinellus) instead, and while Anne and I were strolling around the vicinity of our hotel in Casablanca, before going to the airport to collect my sister, we found a slew of birds at a little puddle of water deep in the brush behind a fence. The black birds are the ibises, the white birds are western cattle egrets, and an added bonus were about a half dozen black-winged stilts. As we left, after sneaking a few pictures through the sticks, something “kicked the hive” because there were suddenly dozens of birds in the sky. Lucky timing!

Also by the hotel in Casablanca, there seemed to have been some kind of land snail infestation. I have never seen so many.

Fast forward to here in Meknes, and there is a pair of kestrels, perhaps a lesser kestrels (Falco naumanni) nesting in the medina wall. This one looks like the male, ….

and this one looks like a female or youngster. Either way, it was calling quite adamantly to the male hiding around the corner.

Finally, here’s another butterfly from Volupilis yesterday, and this one appears to b a brown argus (Aricia agestis)

My sister did arrive safely, and after a quick visit to Casablanca, we took the train inland to Meknes, “one of the four Imperial cities of Morocco.” Here we are staying in a riad, which is very nice, and which gives me a nice roof-top view of the city. While out on the coast, we saw a few storks, just like the ones we saw in South Holland, but here they are everywhere, some towers host a half dozen nests, and here’s one flying over our riad early this morning.

The morning skies are also full of swifts, and here is a momentarily-tight formation of alpine swifts (Tachymarptis melba), which I believe I have seen before on a previous trip to this side of the Atlantic, but never photographed.

Closer to the ground, or rooftops in this case, the first singers I hear in the morning are house buntings (Emberiza sahari), a completely new bird for me, and here’s the best picture I’ve managed so far.

Today, we took a taxi to the nearby Roman ruins of Volubilis, which were amazing in their own right, but I found also found more larks there, and this time they are Thekla’s larks (Galerida theklae). They look very similar to the crested larks we saw in Asilah, but the song is different.

There were also some beautiful butterflies visiting the wild flowers growing amongst the ruins, and this one appears to be one of the many Polyommatus species, maybe even Austaut’s Blue (Polyommatus celina)

They’re pretty on the topside/inside, too.

On the ground, I also noticed this unusual looking “grasshopper”, which could be in either the Truxalis or Acrida genus.

Finally, as we were just about to head back to Meknes, I glimpsed this beauty flying by.

Happily, it didn’t go far before stopping to perch again.

When I saw that big beak that lines up with the dark stripe through the eye, the first thought that popped into my head was “roller”, and sure enough, this is my very first European roller (Coracias garrulus), the only roller that breeds in Europe but also ” the Middle East, Central Asia and the Maghreb.”

Lastly, I did hear from Fuji that they automatically shipped my good lens back to Shorewood on the first day that I arrived here in Morocco. Perfect timing, right? If I have somehow managed to keep FedEX from sending it back to New Jersey while I’ve been away, I might someday be able to show you some nice clear pictures again.

I was out in the field next to our hotel in Asilah again early yesterday morning when I started hearing little sounds from the grass around me, which I first thought were coming from insects, but instead they were coming from these tiny and aptly named zitting cisticolas (Cisticola juncidis). I have never heard of cisticolas before, let alone zitting ones, even though they can be found in South Holland.

When I first spotted this cutie in the bushes right beside the hotel, I thought the dark cap made it a great tit, as we did see in South Holland, and then the separation between the eyeline and the cap is reminiscent of a Eurasian blue tit, which we’ve also seen there, but their range does not extend across the Mediterranean. Instead, this is our very first African blue tit (Cyanistes teneriffae).

After that fruitful outing, Anne and I drove the kids up to Tangier to catch a ferry to Spain, and then we went into the medina to see what we could see. There were a few birds about, especially swifts, but the best picture I could get was of this yellow-legged gull, which we first saw in Slovenia, on the wall of the kasbah.

After a fun evening and overnight in Tangier, this morning we started back south and stopped at Cape Spartel, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, and where this wild boar (Sus scrofa) came out of the woods looking for something to eat. Happily, I was not on the menu. It reminds me of the javelina we saw in Big Bend State Park, but I read that they are only “somewhat” related.

Finally, a bit further down the coast, we stopped again, and the bushes were full of speckled wood butterflies, same as we used to see in South Holland.

My sister, the vet who saved the Carolina warbler from a glue trap, is joining us tomorrow morning, and then we’re taking the train to Meknes. I can’t wait to see what we find there.

After a couple of long, but uneventful flights on Turkish Airways, and a nice long layover in the Istanbul airport, we all finally arrived safely in Morocco yesterday afternoon, at which point we rented a car and drove north along the coast to Asilah, a bit south of Tangier. This morning, after a solid nine hours of sleep and a fine breakfast, I strolled around the grounds of the hotel, and these are some of the sights I got to see.

There is a big field across the road from the hotel, and in the hedge of weeds between the road and the field, a few European greenfinches, which we’ve seen before in South Holland, were feasting from blossoms already gone to seed.

A little river runs to the Atlantic along the north side of the hotel, and this little egret, which we’ve seen before in Mozambique and Slovenia, perched in a palm tree on the riverbank to preen.

Finally, there is a little bridge over that river, which is now closed to car traffic, and on which I captured this image of my very first crested lark (Galerida cristata).

Lastly, here’s a striped hawk-moth (Hyles livornica), which I believe feeds from flowers while hovering like a hummingbird, as we’ve seen snowberry clearwings do in Estabrook Park. This one was cold, however, and even crawled up onto my fingers so that I could take its picture in the sun, after which I left it on a bush in the garden to warm up at its leisure.

You won’t believe who’s back. Ol’ Mrs. Snappy was right were I first found her yesterday morning, and that’s the curb at the edge of the parkway right under her chin. It appears that I misjudged how much she would prefer to lay her eggs in exactly that spot. It did not appear, however, that she was having any better luck digging a hole in the turf than yesterday, but let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson, and I left her to her own devices today. “Best of luck, Ma’am!”

So, I took a seat on the bench, began surveying the birds, and soon saw the wood duck hen and four ducklings, but also spotted the mallard duckling swimming all on its own. Happily, as I searched high and low for Mom and contemplated trying to get a picture, she flew in from somewhere, and the pair were soon reunited. Perhaps she had taken to the air to flee those pesky drakes again. Sheesh!

Anyway, I headed toward the river, and as I entered the clearing at the north end, I was greeted by this happy and more peaceful scene of goslings and their mom grazing under the watchful eye of their dad.

I tried to edge around them to the water without scaring them off, and when I got there, I was thrilled to spot a beaver in the water at the southern tip of the northern island. You can just make out its dark shape in front of the sticks at the water’s edge.

Better yet, as I waited to see what it was up to, it climbed up on the bank behind those sticks and started pushing them around. I wonder what’s up with that. If you’re having trouble spotting it, compare the two pictures and look for the shiny wet fur on its haunches below.

At the far north end, I was counting the cliff swallows and checking on the nesting barn swallows under the Port Washington Road Bridge, when I spotted a cliff swallow swoop up to the bridge under the near span. Holy smokes! They’re also nesting right there, but with a different construction technique. Either that’s a brand new nest, or I’ve failed to notice it all month. “Pay attention, Dressel!” Heck, I thought they had already nested under the eave of the Holiday Inn, but maybe there were just roosting there. I could even see a second nest under the bridge, but it was still a work in progress. Cool!

Back at the pond, the snapping turtle was gone, and I could not tell if she managed to bury her eggs or was forced to give up again. Meanwhile the mallards were up on shore and back in their usual napping spot.

Lastly, as I followed the paved path west of the southern soccer fields, a largish bird with a long tail, like a grackle but brown, flew right in front of me and perched low in the trees on my right. Once I got a good look at it, I could not believe my luck. It’s a black-billed cuckoo, which we only get to see about once a year. Better yet, it perched right in the sun with a nice blue and green background for me. I immediately sat down and crab-walked down the path a bit for a better angle, and thank goodness no runners or cyclists came through for a minute.

Well, that’s gonna be it from Estabrook Park for a while because Anne and I are off to sunny Morocco tomorrow. I’ll bring my camera with, but my good lens is still not yet back from the shop, so I can’t promise much. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

She’s baaaaack. Yup, the snapping turtle in the pond was up on shore and trying to lay her eggs again, just three days later than last year.

Here she is, perhaps thinking, “oh, it’s you again.”

Anyway, this year she had already marched past the bench when I found her, and she was trying to dig a hole through the turf right beside the road. That’s the concrete curb under her chin. She didn’t look like she was making much progress, but she wasn’t actually in the road, and it didn’t appear that she intended to cross it, so I left her alone and hiked around the pond to see who else might be there.

The mallard hen and her duckling and the wood duck hen with her four ducklings were all there, but I found this sight more interesting: a robin chick out of the nest perhaps a day or two before it was ready and looking fewer than thrilled with the development. The parents were nearby and expressing their agitation with me, so I grabbed a quick picture and kept moving.

When I got back to the turtle, she still hadn’t made any progress digging through the turf, so I borrowed a recycling bin from the beer garden, scooped her up, set her free on the east side of the pond where the sod is thinner, and wished her luck. There was no sign of her later on my second visit, so here’s hoping she found a better place than the dirt right in front of the park bench.

The next surprise of the morning was hearing this scarlet tanager and spotting it in a tree right at the crest of the bluff over the river. Dang, I wish I had my good lens back.

Finally, on my walk home, I found another subject that let me get nice and close, our first damselfly of the season, an American rubyspot.

The skies have been cloudy and dark all morning, but the air is calm and not too cool, so it was not the worst weather for a visit to Estabrook Park.

At the pond, I saw three wood duck hens, but only one had ducklings, and here they are setting off to graze some more even before Mom is done with her break.

The mallard hen and her duckling were also grazing on my first visit.

A belted kingfisher was there, but it foiled all my attempts to get close enough for a picture with my current equipment, so I headed to the river. There was plenty to see at the river, but nothing I could capture in this low light, so I returned to the pond and took a seat on the bench to soak in all the action. The green heron was croaking again, and then there were two flying around, which was great to see.

The most interesting sight for me, however, was watching how the mallard hen dealt with some pesky drakes. When nipping at them wasn’t doing the job, she flew up onto the lawn right in front of me, called for her duckling, and eventually flew back to nudge it along. They then paddled over to the lawn together, hopped right up, and the duckling quickly settled down for a nap. The drakes kept their distance out on the water.

In a minute, Mom joined in the napping, and for all the world, it appears that she is using people as a drake deterrent. Fascinating, and no, I don’t have any idea what her age might be, but I think the title works better with “old” in it.

Finally, the one other bird that let me get close enough for a picture this morning was this grey catbird who had a song to sing.