Some Good Sights for the Late Season

Halloween is only days away now but we've continued to have beautiful weather this late fall with daytime temps sometimes reaching into the upper 60's. It's made for enjoyable walks at the park and I've yet needed to wear my winter hat to do so! This Sunday morning I arrived around 8:40am and saw quite a few birds within the first 20-25 minutes including; Bald Eagle, American Tree Sparrow, American Coot, and a few Red-winged Blackbirds! The Blackbirds could be heard singing loudly from the treetops –a sound I've not heard since Springtime. And with the weather as nice as it was it really did feel like a warm spring morning. Near the pond on the south side I started to watch the Blackbirds and noticed what looked to be a different bird among them. Indeed there was a group of about a dozen "Rusty Blackbirds" mixed in! These have been a somewhat rare sight for me until last Spring when I saw them near the river and also at PLP. But I believe this is my first sighting of one in the Fall which is neat. At this time of year they can look rather similar to the juvenile RW-Blackbirds but they obviously lack the red & yellow wing bar and are even more "rusty" looking in color. The most obvious thing to me is that they have a fairly noticeable yellow colored eye as opposed to the sold black eye of the Red-winged. This one landed close to me but was mostly blocked by grass and is the best photo I got. Either the air temp was warmer than the water or visa versa, but on the "Duck Pond" on the southwest corner of the park, there was mist hanging over the water. To my surprise there are still a pair of Northern Shovelers hanging out here! They both seem to be females and I saw now sign of the male that I spotted back on October 4th. Sometimes I forget just how much smaller a Shoveler is until they come in contact with a Mallard and then it is obvious. Speaking of Mallards, a whole group of them hopped up onto the banks of Shingle Creek on the north side and began following me down the trail! It's obvious from this behavior that people have been feeding them. I just let them huddle around me and continued walking slowly, trying not to step on any of them. By now the morning sun was hanging low in the sky and a few of the males were looking quite brilliant in the sun. I tell people that whenever I can't find any good birds, I resort to trying to capture the iridescent quality of Mallard heads - ha! And in some instances it can actually be worth it. I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. My last photo shared here today is one of many American Tree Sparrows back on the east side. The Tree Sparrow is a bird that is just not returning for the winter time –arriving even later than Junco's in most cases. The best way to ID them is that their upper and lower bills are different in color –yellow on bottom and dark on the top. A few other birds I spotted today included a Fox Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Dark-eyed Junco, Cedar Waxwing, Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker and American Crow.