Horicon Marsh and Hotel Jam

 

Today Travalon and I took my aunt and uncle from Colorado out to Horicon Marsh. Before we went there, they gave me a little chick made by Ma Hat out of the rest of the yarn that glows under blacklight. Check it out.

We were trying to decide on a good name for it. Claudia Von Cluckwallader? Claudia Von Hatchenberg? Chelveston? (But he was a white duck, not a yellowish chick.) We haven't settled on anything yet.

Here are some of the birds we saw today. We saw plenty of egrets.

And some blue-winged teals.

And lots of barn swallows.

And of course tons of red-winged blackbirds.

Here is another male blue-winged teal.

And another barn swallow.

In the woods we saw trilliums. Here you can see a fresh new flower that is pure white, an older one that is pale pink, and a very old one that is dark pink.

We also saw this cute little chipmunk.

There were lots of mayapples, but only a few were in bloom. Most had buds.

We did see a pair of swans.

We saw three pelicans, so it was a Three Big White Birds Day, because we never saw a whooping crane.

We saw a number of Canada goose families.

I think this is a robin sitting on its nest on the purple martins' house.

We saw this flicker on a fence.

And in the distance we saw what Travalon called a "cormorant convention."

You can see that the purple martins really are purple.

And here are some photos of us!

Look at the big beer my uncle got at lunch at the Mexican restaurant in Mayville!

We stopped by Patrick Marsh on our way back to Madison and saw a couple of great blue herons, but Travalon didn't take any photos. He also didn't get photos of the yellow warbler or the Baltimore oriole we saw at Horicon Marsh because they moved too fast. 

We went back to the hotel where my aunt and uncle are staying, and my uncle played the flute while I played the mandolin. I tried to teach him an Irish jig, "Swallowtail," then we tried to play some Renaissance pieces, but oddly we had the best luck with "The Ballad of Curtis Lowe" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, because I figured out the chords (there were only three), while my uncle jammed on a harmony on the flute, and Travalon sang. We didn't realize it, since we were out on the balcony and my aunt was in the room, but she made a recording of us. We didn't sound half bad! Maybe I'll post the video sometime.

Famous Hat