This morning I was getting ready for work, and making good time, when I suddenly felt strange and had a bout of sickness. I messaged my boss to ask if I could work from home, and she said just take the day off. She was probably onto something, because now when I look in the mirror, I look like death warmed over. Honestly, Monday I woke up with a headache but dragged myself to work, and midway through the day I felt really awful, fatigued and with a slight sore throat, but then yesterday I was fine. So today I am home sick, and I texted my colleague to let her know I wouldn't be able to walk at lunchtime. She replied, "No, thanks," right away, which seemed odd, but English is not her first language so I thought maybe she misunderstood and thought I wanted to walk even though I was sick. Then she texted again right away to say her phone had sent that reply, it hadn't been her words, and she hoped I felt better soon. I had to laugh, since my phone was doing the same sorts of things as I tried to text Tiffy on Saturday.
Travalon thought some fresh air might help me, so we went to the bird party across from Tenney Park. The water is open there because of the locks I suppose, since the water in them is running so the city must keep them from freezing. And we saw a bird party! To me, a bird party is when there are at least three species of birds gathered, and here you can see the trumpeter swan, Canada geese, and female mallard.
In this photo, you can see a female goldeneye duck and a male mallard, besides the geese and swan.
There were some juvenile swans that were sort of grayish colored sitting on the ice on the far edge of the open water, and Travalon did get photos of them, but they were all sleeping so not super exciting.
The two pairs of adults swans closer to us made for some wonderful photos.
And here you can see the male (black and white) and female (brown and gray) goldeneyes.
This is a female goldeneye. On Saturday when I was trying to determine if the ducks on Lake Michigan were goldeneyes or buffleheads, I said "buffle eyes or golden heads," which isn't a thing, but it makes for some interesting mental imagery.
I like this photo because one goose looks like it's yelling. We also heard the swans honking. It's a softer honk than the geese have. I was told by the birdwatchers on social media that trumpeter swans honk, while tundra swans yelp. Also, trumpeter swans are larger, and you can see how much bigger these swans are than the geese.
These next few shots aren't quite as in focus, but you can really see the goldeneyes.
In this photo, you can see the male goldeneye on the left throwing his head forward. Then he threw it back. It's a mating ritual, and too bad they were too far away to make a video, because it's pretty cool. The male will just be swimming along, and suddenly he throws his head forward and back. Pro tip: you can find much better videos of this online than we could probably ever make.
It's a cold day, but very sunny, so we thought we would drive around a bit. We checked the spot where we had seen two swans on Sunday, but there was no sign of them today, plus the water there has frozen back over. We thought we would check out the pond in Waunakee, although usually nothing is going on there in the spring. To our surprise, there was a bird party!... but it was only geese.
I tried to find the name of this pond on Google maps, but it doesn't seem to have one. It's a widening of Sixmile Creek, and it's really close to an area of Westport called Mary Lake, so maybe it's Mary Lake? It must have a name.
Then we came home and saw our neighborhood cranes hiding in the marsh.
I had to write a short blurb about myself for a newsletter at work, and they wanted something about our jobs and our life outside of work, so I said how Travalon and I are bird paparazzi. After all, we kind of stalk the birds and show up where we know they might be, just like real paparazzi do to human celebrities. Now Travalon has left for work, and I will probably take a nap. We're done stalking birds for today.
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