Today I have felt achy and tired all day from getting my second Pfizer shot yesterday morning, but I did manage to go to Horicon Marsh with Travalon, Anna Banana II, OK Cap, and Luxuli. (Jilly Moose had a family birthday party to attend today.) First we went to the part with the boardwalk, and mostly what we saw were Canada geese on top of muskrat lodges, but we did see a few painted turtles as well.
And here is a shot of the boardwalk itself.
Then we continued along the three-mile driving loop, and we saw a swan with a very dirty neck.
On the other side of the road were these cute little birds, I think they're called avocets.
This picture isn't totally in focus, but you can see another type of sandpiper behind them.
In the big pond area where we have seen pelicans and egrets in the past, we saw a lot of blue-winged teals today. Those photos are all out of focus for some reason, but this one Travalon took off our dock made me laugh.
We stopped at the place where we saw the whooping crane last time, but there was hardly anything happening there. We could see some pelicans in the distance, but those photos are also not really in focus. Then we stopped for lunch at Subway before heading to the part where we always see the white-headed goose. Can you believe he let us down today?? His buddies were chilling in the field.
Finally, we went to the top of the hill from which you can see almost all of the marsh.
Suddenly, three pelicans flew toward us!
They flew around for quite a while, landed in the water briefly, and then took off again.
I think these are purple martins. They have a lovely liquid twittery song.
On the way home, we passed Patrick Marsh and I saw a bunch of pelicans making a conga line, so we decided to check it out. (OK Cap and Luxuli were in another car, so they didn't follow us.) In this photo, you can see a blue heron standing by the shore.
And here are the black-headed gulls, which I learned are called Bonaparte's gulls.
"Hey, what's that over there?"
"I don't think I like the looks of it!"
Some other pelicans were at the other end of the lake, and then they flew to join the ones on the far side.
Here you can see, besides the two pelicans, a Bonaparte's gull and what looks like a ruddy duck.
We drove to the other side of the lake to get a closer look at the pelicans. I'm not sure why some have the thing sticking up on their beaks and others don't. I thought I'd heard that was a breeding feature, so maybe one gender doesn't have it, or the ones that don't have it are still young.
To give you an idea of how huge the pelicans are, here they are with a female wood duck.
And here are both the male and female wood ducks.
I love how the pelicans swim in conga lines!
We did see an egret at Horicon, but we were on the main road and didn't have a chance to stop for a photo. We also saw a sandhill crane there, but we can see those right by our house - and we did, as we were getting ready to leave this morning.
They are totally dinosaurs. True story: they found a ten-million year old fossil of a sandhill crane in Nebraska, right around where they live there today, and it was exactly the same as today's sandhill cranes. Why mess with a winning design? For some reason Tiffy found that story creepy, although I don't know why. I like that they are still the same ten million years later.
Famous Hat
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