Saturday, March 13, 2021

Horicon Marsh 2021: A Perfect Start to the Birdwatching Season

 

This morning I went for a walk and heard our friendly neighborhood cranes sounding off. Here is a photo Travalon took this past week of one of them.


Here is another photo from earlier in the week - another sunset.


Then Travalon and I drove up to Horicon Marsh, and first we went to the part with all the geese, hoping to see our buddy the white-headed goose. We quickly spotted him, and at first he appeared to be hanging out by himself, ignored by the other geese.



But then his mate joined him, and you can see that they are very tight.



Then we stopped at a part where we usually don't see anything, but we could see a bunch of seagulls off in the distance, and I thought I saw a pair of swans. We did see several sandhill cranes fly by.


And then a whooping crane flew right over us! He was huge!!


He landed and strolled around. What a magnificent bird!



We went to the part where there is a three-mile drive, but it was gated off for cars, so we parked and started walking toward the boardwalk. We saw an area with a lot of seagulls and this pair of swans.


Then they flew right over us! They fly so close together.


Bye bye, swans! We had no idea where they were headed.


I'm not a big watcher of romantic movies, but seeing all these pairs of birds really touched me. They seem like such loving couples.


We did see this lonely goose. I hope it finds a mate. And I hope the whooping crane does too!


We walked out on the boardwalk and saw more geese. As we were coming back, the swans flew back over our heads and landed right where they had been before.




Travalon took lots of great photos today, but this may be my favorite. The swans just look so happy! In fact, they kind of look like they are laughing.


Who knows? Maybe they were laughing at us.


Famous Hat


No comments: