Travalon was able to get today off of work, so I asked for it off as well, and we drove to Horicon. We decided to walk on Old Marsh Road, just before the floating boardwalk, and as we walked along we met a couple walking the other way. I asked if they had seen anything interesting, and they said they had seen a pair of whooping cranes off to the right. I said I would really like to see a yellow-headed blackbird, and they said they had seen a number of them just beyond the turn in the road. We set off, and we saw (and heard) this song sparrow.
We also saw this male blue-winged teal all by himself.
We saw a pair of swans. Here is a photo of one of them.
Then we looked to the right and saw the pair of whooping cranes!
There were lots of these wild roses in bloom.
When we passed an area with trees, on the other side it was marshier, and there were lots of these lovely water lilies blooming.
There was no manmade noise, and I could hear all the bees buzzing around in the blooming sweet clover. We also heard lots of intriguing bird songs. One sounded like a laugh, and the people we had talked to said that was a sora. Another sounded like a puppy, which tundra swans can sound like, but I believe those have all migrated much further north (hence the name), and the ones we saw today were trumpeter swans. Here is one with an egret.
And here is a closeup of the egret.
We also heard a weird birdsong that sounded like the bird was being strangled, and I thought that might be the yellow-headed blackbirds. It was! We actually saw three. Here are photos of the one who posed most nicely for us.
I believe these are oxeye daisies.
Then we could hear thunder in the distance, so I said let's hurry back, and when we turned around, we could see a lot of lightning strikes to the north of us. We saw the two whooping cranes again, and after we passed them, they began calling to each other. I wish I'd brought recording equipment, but you can find really good examples of these calls on All About Birds.
We were too far away to see if there were any baby cranes. As we neared the car, we saw five egrets, but when they saw us, they flew up into the trees.
On the rest of the car tour, we saw this egret.
We also saw black-necked stilts.
We went to the part where we often see the white-headed goose, but there were no geese in sight today. This female house finch is sitting on her nest under the roof of the building.
Here is her mate, I think yelling at us?
Here is proof that we saw all four Big White Birds today: pelicans!
In the Explorium, there is a snapping turtle named Marshall.
We went back to the driving tour, but it never stopped raining, so we just looked out the car windows at another egret and geese families with teenage offspring.
Then we went to the Columbus Antique Mall, where I found a rosary and mother-of-pearl cross.
This little painting was a dollar, and I think it might glow under blacklight, but for once I'm blogging before dark so this question will have to be answered in tomorrow's post.
There was a banjolele with a cracked neck, but I did find this adorable and very cheap ukulele that was totally playable but seemingly tuned differently. This is another mystery for me to solve in my spare time, just like the mystery of how to tune my sitar.
And I bought this silver beret-type hat. No idea where I'll wear it.
This is a better photo of the hat, but not of me.
Travalon had some more photos on his camera from when he has gone out to the dock at sunset and when he went to Sauk and Devil's Lake on Saturday, so look for those on tomorrow's post.
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