More Bird Stories

Since most of what I do these days is either talk to people on video chats or go for walks in my neighborhood, that is all I can really blog about. Yesterday the Rosary Ladies got together again for a rosary on Google Hangouts, and then at 9 pm I prayed a second rosary because the grad student in Poland had emailed me to say everyone should pray a rosary at 9 pm their local time for an end to the pandemic. It was a Dominican thing because it was the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena.

Yesterday it was raining all day, but my neighbor and I went for our four walks anyway. (I get breaks at 10 and 3, a lunch break at noon, and then at 4:30 I'm done with work and back out the door for another walk.) On one of the afternoon walks, it was no longer raining hard, just drizzling, and as we were walking along, we saw a man coming toward us who kept looking over his shoulder. Walking behind him with great purpose was a crane. The man told us, "I don't know why he's following me," and he turned off. The crane kept going straight, walking right by us two women without paying us any mind. It looked like it had to be somewhere quite promptly.

The other day I was walking alone on the boardwalk behind a nearby condo complex when I saw a pair of geese ahead of me on the boardwalk. I slowed down to give them time to move, and they waddled off to the side and started heading toward the water. There were large rocks along the shore, and one goose tripped and fell down over the rocks, then it got back up and acted like, "I meant to do that!" The second goose seemed freaked out by this turn of events, and it gingerly stepped over the rocks and made its way very slowly to the water. I couldn't help it, I laughed. When I told Travalon this story and the one about the crane, he said, "You sure get a lot of story material from the birds in our neighborhood!" So I figured, why not blog about it?

On a related note, the lone goose has not been hanging around in its usual spot, so I told Travalon I had scared it off by saying I would be its friend, and just then we turned a corner and saw a whole bunch of geese. There were three pairs, and one by itself, but still with the group. So it looks like our grieving goose is slowly making it way back into goose society.

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Bird Love Stories

I did some research on lone geese, and the wisdom of the internet seems to be that they are not usually social outcasts but mourning the loss of a mate. So that would explain why our neighborhood lone goose seems sad, but maybe I annoyed it by saying I would be its friend, because today I didn't see it. Geese mate for life, and if they lose their mate, they sometimes stay alone forever, but even if they do look for a new mate, it wouldn't be until the fall, when they all gather together to migrate. The other possibility is that it is a young goose that hasn't found a mate yet, but it seems very sad, so I think it is in mourning. No wonder it disappeared when I offered to be its friend - it doesn't want a friend, it just wants to be left alone to grieve.

I also looked up whether cranes can hybridize, and I found a fascinating story from five years ago, when a male whooping crane took up with a female sandhill crane at Horicon Marsh. They had a chick, and the Crane Foundation posted a photo of the white crane that was almost twice as tall as the brown crane, and the little chick walking between them. At that time the Crane Foundation wasn't too worried about "Whoopsie" the whoop hill crane, since crane chicks have high mortality rates. However, Whoopsie grew up, and then the Crane Foundation got kind of freaked out. Even though this happened in nature, they decided to interfere, so they caught Whoopsie and kept him at the Crane Foundation, paired up with a sandhill crane. Even though he is almost certainly sterile, they didn't want there to be any chance that he would dilute the whooping crane gene pool. Worse, they caught his dad and took him to a breeding facility in Florida to try to convince him to mate with another whooping crane. Can you imagine his poor first wife back in Horicon Marsh? She is probably thinking, "I found the tallest, most beautiful crane in the marsh, and now he has disappeared!" Hopefully she found another sandhill crane to mate with, but if cranes mate for life, I'm not sure either one will want a new mate after they chose each other. Kind of a tragic romance, all thanks to people. Maybe we shouldn't mess with nature.

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The Autumn of My Life

Today as Travalon and I were out for a walk, a car pulled up to us to ask where a house was in our neighborhood that is for sale. A dog was sticking its head out of the back seat window, and it was wearing sunglasses. Then we saw the goose that is always alone, and I just feel so sorry for it. I told it we would be its friends, but it just walked away from us. It wants goose friends, and I hope it finds some. Geese shouldn't be alone, just like people.

Last night I felt very sad because I am entering another stage of life, and it is the autumn of my life. I have never really liked autumn, because it means winter is on the way. No matter how many cheery websites I read that say to regard this as an exciting new phase of my journey, it's hard to get excited about it. Autumn does have some lovely weather and beautiful colors, but every year I wish it would stay summer forever, and now I wish I could stay young forever. I have other friends on a similar journey, and some say it gets worse, but the ones on the other side say once you arrive, it's a relief. One told me she felt stronger and healthier afterwards. I guess it's like being a teenager in reverse - your hormones are going crazy, only it's because things are shutting down instead of starting up. So if you see me crying, it's just those crazy hormones.

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Amazing Day at Horicon Marsh

Here are some pictures from yesterday: the blond squirrel and the blond deer. These are not so good because I didn't have my good camera with me.

Today was a most amazing day at Horicon Marsh. First we went to the part where we always see the white-headed goose (which may be a gander), and there were several families of geese with fuzzy little goslings. Alas, our buddy did not have any with him, but he did come over to us! Almost like a tame goose. He looks as if a mad scientist sewed the head and neck of a barnyard goose onto the body of a Canada goose, and maybe he is part barnyard goose and so a little more tame. I actually did some research on goose hybrids, and it turns out all species of geese can hybridize with each other because they have 40 pairs of chromosomes, and they often do because of "nonconsensual mating" (what we call "rape" in human society), and because mother geese will lay their eggs in another goose's nest. If the mother happens to be a snow goose but the nest belongs to a Canada goose, the gosling grows up imprinted on a Canada goose, and that's who he wants to mate with. Our buddy clearly thinks he is a Canada goose. The question I could not find an answer for is whether he would be fertile, and the fact that he has no goslings makes me sad, but he still appears to have a mate on the nest, so maybe the eggs just haven't hatched yet.

Here are some photos from both Travalon's good camera and mine.

Then we went to the hill and walked down along the marsh, and we saw some pelicans.

We also saw this sandhill crane hanging out with Canada geese.

I wanted to go to a spot where we had seen two swans, in case they happened to be there again. They weren't, but we did see three pelicans flying overhead. I am amazed that an animal can be so magnificent and yet so goofy. Then we went to the part of the marsh with the boardwalk, and when we were almost to the parking lot, I spotted what in technical parlance is know as a big-@$$ bird. It was bright white and as tall as I am. We pulled over, and Travalon got these shots of the elusive whooping crane - what I consider the "Holy Grail" of birdwatching at Horicon Marsh.

We also saw this cute duck, which another couple who had also been stalking the whooping crane said was called a scaub.

Just in case we hadn't seen enough pelicans, we came to a spot with dozens of these gorgeous, large, white birds in the evening sunlight. I love how some of them look like they are having the worst hair day!

To give you an idea of how many pelicans were on this particular part of the marsh, here are a couple of photos from up above, looking down at them.

On the way home, we passed this hill, which doesn't seem to have a name on any of the many maps I have consulted.

Travalon and I have decided to call it "Mount Wank," after a real mountain in Germany. The real Mount Wank has a chalet on it called the Wankhaus, and it looks gorgeous. We would love to visit it someday. But for now we will have to settle for driving by our own local Mount Wank!

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Saturday Wildlife Sightings

Today was proof that I should always bring my good camera with me. We had a lazy morning, sleeping in late, and I took a walk with my neighbor at ten just like a weekday, then I took a rosary walk by myself at noon. Who should I see on this walk but the neighborhood blond squirrel? I got some okay pictures of it that I will post soon, but imagine what I could have gotten with my good camera! In the afternoon Travalon and I went for a walk on the boardwalk in DeForest, and we followed the paved path until spotting a path that went into the woods. It goes along the mighty Yahara River, which is more of a creek at that point, and on the other side was a field. The path ended with a fallen tree, and I stepped into the field to try to see around the fallen tree, but the path did not continue on the other side. Just then a crane began to yell, and we saw a pair of them far off in the field. Another crane yelled back from the direction we had come from, and we saw another pair further down the field, and beyond them, at least twenty-five deer. Two of the deer were blond, like the squirrel, and I took some photos, but alas, they are nothing like what I could have gotten with my good camera. The two pairs of cranes started walking toward each other, yelling and yelling, and I wondered if there would be a terrific fight. However, once they met up, they started strolling along together like two couples who were old friends. Once the cranes fell silent, the deer began invading their part of the field, and then they started yelling again. One deer approached them pretty closely but thought better of it, and after a while all the deer ran back to the far end of the field again, and then they disappeared into the woods on the other side of the field. Travalon and I watched all this from our part of the woods with great fascination. I said it was way more interesting than anything on television. We returned the way we had come, and as we were on the boardwalk, we saw a male squirrel chasing a female one. The female was much prettier than the average squirrel, with a bushy orange tail and white ears. She didn't let the male catch her - maybe waiting for a less ordinary mate? Maybe she would like the blond squirrel in our neighborhood. (Of course, it might also be a female.) Then when we pulled into our street, we saw the lone crane and the lone Canada goose together again. I am seriously starting to wonder if they are some kind of crazy couple.

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Spring Flowers and Big Birds

I don't have too much to say, except that Travalon and I entered a lottery to attend a small Mass at our church, and we won a slot next Friday at noon. Which would be perfect, except that our department always has a video chat at one. Fortunately my boss was willing to push it back to 1:30 next week.

I do have some pictures, though. First are some pretty spring flowers in our neighborhood, hyacinths and daffodils.

And one of the landscapers responsible for all these pretty flowers had this charming wheelbarrow. I love how the colors are so springy.

In my house, the plants are also happier with the increasing sunshine. Here are some of my cacti and succulents, basking in the southern exposure of our kitchen window.

And this is the Rosary for Peace - you can see how the third and fifth decades are very subtly different shades of green. No teal.

This is the pair of cranes who always nest in our neighborhood.

There are some Canada geese too. And what's this? Is it a lone goose and a lone crane... or an odd couple??

I see on social media that there are goslings now at Horicon Marsh. Hopefully we can get there again this weekend and see if the white-headed goose has any offspring. Of course, if it is a hybrid, it could possibly be sterile, but it seemed to have a mate and a nest. Stay tuned...

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Technology Is Amazing!

Last night the Rosary Ladies got together on Google Hangouts and prayed the rosary together, except for OK Cap. She couldn't do it until tonight, so we are scheduled to get together again. Today I had an even more amazing rosary experience - I prayed remotely with someone in Poland! Maybe because of my somewhat advanced age (I can remember when talking to someone half a world away involved a phone that was stuck to the wall), I am still blown away that we can pray the rosary together, seeing and hearing each other, when she is on the other side of the planet. What a small world it has become!

The rosary I used is a new one I ordered, now that Lent is over. It is very beautiful, with each decade a different shade of blue or green, and it came with a prayer card explaining which decade to pray for what intention. (It is a Rosary for Peace, so the intentions are peace in the world, in our country, in the Church, in our family, and for myself.) I was a little sad because in the photo it looked like the middle decade was teal, my favorite color, but on my rosary it looked like the same shade of green as the last decade. Even the font for that intention implied that it should have been teal. Otherwise it is a very beautiful rosary, so I felt a little silly to make a big deal out of it, but I called the seller, who looked at other ones in the warehouse. She said on all of them the third decade is a slightly lighter shade of green than the last decade, and it's easier to see against a white piece of paper, so I tried that and saw she was right. She wondered if the manufacturer ran out of the teal beads. Anyway, that was all in natural light. In the evening, under lamplight, the two decades do look different. Either way, it is such a beautiful rosary, and I've been using it for my video conferencing rosaries now that almost all my other ones are otherwise engaged in being part of the meta-rosary. See? I knew there was a good excuse for ordering yet another rosary!

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The Greed Channel

Yesterday afternoon my neighbor met Travalon and me at a park not far from where we live, and she supplied the kites. Travalon flew the kite that was pictured on this blog, I flew one that looked like a black leech with a very long tail, and our neighbor tried to fly a box kite, but she didn't have much luck. I got the leech pretty far up in the air, and it swooped and spun, but then it sputtered and fell to earth after about ten minutes. Travalon had pretty good luck with his kite too. It was a lot of fun, but then we had to leave for my adoration hour, so we gave our neighbor her kites back and left.

Later in the evening we watched a news station that we generally don't watch. I won't name it, but its name in numerology is seriously the Mark of the Beast - 666. The story we saw was about how Pennsylvania is paying people on unemployment a living wage, and the host (whose name rhymes with vanity, even if the sin he really indulges in is greed) was saying how awful that was because then people were getting paid more to not work than to work. The governor said employers could always choose to pay people more, but this host did not even address that point. I mean, if he so worships the Invisible Hand of the Market, shouldn't he pay some honor to the way capitalism works, which is that you might have to pay more to workers to get them? It seems to me that this station really exists to convince the masses that making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share, either in wages or in taxes (or both?), is some sort of crime against humanity. Partly they do that by creating a false dichotomy, pitting greed against other immorality, as if a person couldn't be against both abortion and extortion. (I'm sure any of my readers who have agitated for social justice and heard "But abortion!" know what I'm talking about.) As if withholding the just wages from the worker isn't also a crime that cries to Heaven for vengeance! I wonder if this false dichotomy also existed in the time of Jesus, because while abortion and homosexuality and things like that all happened in his day, he didn't say a word about them... but he certainly railed against abuse and neglect of the poor. It's odd that this station appeals to so many people who claim to be Christian, because it certainly advocates a very non-Christlike world view. ("Think of the poor businessman who has to actually pay a living wage to get workers to work for him! Now he'll only have twenty billion dollars instead of thirty billion!") Certainly the people running this station are not at all concerned with the actual workers who do risky work for low pay. Maybe this is the "Christian" station, but I follow Christ, not Christians. Greed is a deadly sin in my Bible.

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Make 2020 a Jubilee Year!!

So many people are struggling right now. My neighbor says she has talked to other small business owners who are down to their last $25, and it seems unsustainable that everyone would be so broke. I said her landlord should not charge rent during this time, and she said he has a mortgage, so then I had an idea - why not make 2020 a jubilee year? In the Bible, every fifty years they had a jubilee year, when all debts were forgiven. Think about it: not only is 2020 a nice, round number and so fit for a special year, but if the landlord didn't have a mortgage and the tenants didn't have rent, then the only people out money would be some obscenely rich people in the banking industry, who instead of making $50 million in bonuses this year maybe could only get a $10 million bonus or something. The sad thing is that some of the richest people on earth are actually making a huge profit during this pandemic, while so many other people are losing money when they already have so little. A jubilee year would rectify those wrongs. How do we start a movement?

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Adjusting to Social Isolation

Yesterday morning Travalon said, "I have to take a shower before Mass." I thought that was pretty funny and said, "Are you afraid they're going to smell you through the computer screen?" but those old habits do die hard - I find myself mentally putting together a work outfit sometimes before remembering I can just wear jeans and a hoodie. And that is fancy compared to some of my friends, who are really taking this "working from home" thing seriously and never change out of pajamas, but I do take walks throughout the day so I have to wear something presentable to the outside world. Maybe that is what keeps me sane, because if I really never had to put on regular clothes, I would feel so lazy even if I was working hard on the computer. It's all a mental game at this point. I must be winning the game, because I really don't feel that restricted. We can't go to the movies... but I never did all that much anyway. We can't go shopping... but I never did all that much anyway, except for grocery shopping, which we can still do. The one thing I miss is getting together with friends, but we can talk to each other over video chat, and that's almost as satisfying. I do miss making music with people, but so far neither my band nor my choir has tried doing video practices. The ukulele group was doing virtual jams, and I was going to try that, but now the leader has to take a break, so I missed my chance for the moment. I do really like doing night prayer via video chat, and that is a new thing in my life. I pray morning and evening prayer by myself, but it's wonderful to do night prayer with other people, and then afterwards we talk about issues we need prayers for. It's a bonding experience at a time when those are hard to come by.

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Theresa Marsh

Did everyone get out to enjoy this weather? It was just as beautiful as yesterday. As opposed to last weekend, when our Slow Food buddy took this picture of us on the hill overlooking Horicon Marsh. You can kind of tell it was raining, but it's not a bad picture anyway.

My rosary sun catcher is done! It actually works - I prayed a rosary using it.

And this is how it looks hanging in our living room window.

This is the small pond at Meadow Ridge Park, the same park where the bluff is, in the neighborhood right next to ours. I assume the bluff is the "Meadow Ridge"?

Here is a picture from the car protest yesterday! The sign says: "F the 35s!" The F-35 fighter jets are rumored to be exceedingly loud, so those of us living near the airport would prefer that they not come to town. For some reason we were chosen, along with Montgomery, Alabama, the place where I got in a fight with an insect and lost. (Who knew luna moths were so strong that I couldn't move one from the sidewalk to the grass?) To add insult to injury, I think it was dying, but I had to enlist Travalon's help to move it.

This is what my rosary rack looks like at the moment, with nothing but junk mail rosaries on it because the other ones are up in the loft as part of my meta-rosary. I did like how these were all shades of blue and brown.

My neighbor was flying a kite this morning! It was so pretty in real life - this photo doesn't do it justice.

Today Travalon and I went to Theresa Marsh, which is east of Horicon Marsh. We saw lots of these cute little sandpiper things there, which I have never seen at Horicon.

We also saw this cool painted turtle on a rock. I tried to take photos of coots and a blue heron, but they did not turn out at all. However, when we came back along the path, the same turtle was on a different rock. I will let you choose which photo you like better.

Here is a shot of Theresa Marsh (and my car) from a slight hill behind it.

Then we went to Horicon Marsh and saw my buddy the white-headed goose. Maybe it really is a male, because it appeared to be patrolling around a nesting goose. Or do they take turns sitting on the nest? I'm afraid I really know very little about goose breeding habits.

For reference, here is a standard Canada goose. It has the same wings and white rump.

Then we went to Burke Town Park and walked around this odd little island that is a hill. I think some or all of this may be manmade.

We ended the afternoon by going to the Union, because I had forgotten to take pictures of the pier that drifted over to our side of the lake. We found a primo parking spot and cut through Alumni Park, where Travalon took this photo of me "riding" the Harley Davidson statue.

Here are some photos of the Hoofers pier, so that you can see how, when we looked through the binoculars, we thought a boardwalk had suddenly appeared across the river with white brick walls and towers on the gate. It looked like a very permanent structure to have sprung up overnight and then vanished again! Here you can see the "towers" are lights and the "walls" are storage bins.

And this is a close-up of one of the light structures, not out on that pier.

We headed back through Alumni Park, and I saw this cute little model of the Capitol Dome.

For reference, here is the actual Capitol Building.

Finally, we went to the co-op to buy food and coffee and dish soap, things like that, and since it is no longer Lent, I did buy myself this very cute little cactus.

So it was a wonderful weekend, and you could hardly beat the weather for this time of year!

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