Day 19.229: Eagle Marsh Nature Preserve

This preserve was less than ten minutes away from my hotel and I managed three short visits there. The first was the longest and most successful (on the afternoon I arrived). This is some of what I saw there on that visit:

The marsh

I think this is a very strikingly colored red-tailed hawk

The most exciting sighting were several red-headed woodpeckers. This one carried this large cicada to the top of this dead tree...

...and deposited it down into it (presumably feeding young in a nest)

Red-tailed hawk

Eastern kingbird

Great egret

I think this is an olive-sided flycatcher. I wish it had turned around so I could see its olive sides.

Great egret

I saw a flash of blue as some birds disappeared into a thicket. Only one stayed for a photo and it was anything but blue despite being an indigo bunting (female)

Northern leopard frog

Monarch

Red-tailed hawk

Tall ironweed

Hollow Joe-Pye weed