In early August I stopped by the baseball fields near my house to see if any parakeets were nesting. Getting out of the car I could see the nest high up in the light post. The clouds were moving in over the sun you could just make out a faint rainbow around it.
I could hear loud screaming coming from below the light post in the big pile of sticks. The parakeets build their nests at the bottom of the osprey nests and go in from underneath. The osprey have long left since they nest late winter. These monk parakeets were busying flying in and out but I didn’t see any young ones. There were several entrance holes to this one big nest.
A few of them flew over to the tree and hung out there for a while.
Some of the other light posts that didn’t have nests were full of pigeons taking a nap.
A tricolored heron posing on top of the ballfield fence, in the outfield.
There weren’t any games going on while I was there and the park was pretty quiet with a few people on the tennis courts. There were at least 8 empty osprey nests here but it’s hard to get good shots of the babies since the nests are so high up. Years ago I saw some loggerhead shrikes juveniles here but I didn’t see any here today. I’ll check back on another quiet day.