Niko and the Gallinules

 

I realize that today's blog post title sounds like a garage band, but the only band involved in this post is a Brazilian one. Stay with me. The day started with some reflection on what Juneteenth means, then since both Travalon and Tiffy had it off of work, I had requested a vacation day so we could all go to Horicon Marsh. I put Niko in my pocket, and we met Tiffy at Guth's in Waupun for coffee, breakfast sandwiches, and those famous peanut butter cups we usually get at the Schultz Cheese Haus, then we all headed to the marsh in Travalon's car.

Our first stop was the floating boardwalk, where we saw lots of terns and of course red-winged blackbirds. We also saw this barn swallow lying on the boardwalk.

We thought it was injured, but finally it flew away. We saw a mama duck with some babies, but she seemed too small to be a mallard, so we're guessing she's a blue-winged teal.

I didn't hear any gallinules in that section of the marsh. As my regular readers may remember, when we went to the marsh with Anna Banana II, we could hear them from the boardwalk, and they sounded very close, but we couldn't see them at all. It had been hot and sunny, but when we returned to the parking lot, it had clouded up and cooled off quite a bit, so we sat in the shade and enjoyed the breeze that had blown up. I was a bit concerned about the thunder we could hear in the distance, so we decided to continue on the auto tour, and we saw a lot of egrets. Here are at least seven together.

Here is a close-up shot of one.

And we saw a black-necked stilt and a blue-winged teal right next to each other.

We drove to Old Marsh Road and saw a lot of people coming off of it because of the approaching bad weather. I asked what they had seen, and they all had seen gallinules. Now in all my times going to the marsh, I have never seen one. I've heard their weird, whinnying call many times, but they are elusive to my eyes, and I am pretty good at spotting birds. I have the skill set to be an excellent hunter-gatherer, always spotting birds and always remembering where plants are located. Some other guys were undaunted and headed onto the road, so we did too. We were rewarded with the weird call of the yellow-headed blackbirds, like a cross between a very rusty door and a cat being strangled. Then we saw them.

We also saw black-necked stilts.

And turtles.

I was very excited because Tiffy and I saw a gallinule with something big in its mouth (maybe a frog), but Travalon didn't see it. He did get more photos of the yellow-headed blackbirds.

And the black-necked stilts, which make a very loud noise.

Here's a killdeer.

And another egret.

And another black-necked stilt:

The killdeer laid an egg right in the middle of the path, so someone put sticks around it so nobody would step on it.

Here's a black-necked stilt flying.

We saw lots of terns, but they were too quick to photograph. We saw a swan way in the distance, and one pelican flew overhead, so it was a Three Big White Bird Day for those keeping track at home.

The two guys came back, and we asked if they had seen the ibises everyone was talking about. They said we had passed them, so they brought us back to where you could see them in the distance.

We actually saw two of them.

These birds are very unusual to see in Wisconsin. Are they breeding here? We have seen them in Florida. After the two men had shown them to us, one walked ahead while the other hung back and chatted with us, and he pointed out that there was a gallinule. This time Travalon got a fantastic photo.

There were actually two of them. Look how small they are compared to the geese!

Then a pair of sandhill cranes flew into the scene. Here is one of them.

And another turtle.

We bid adieu to Tiffy and headed home, stopping at Patrick Marsh, where we saw lots of pelicans.

My Union peeps were having another training session tonight, but we realized I would never get there on time even before we stopped at Patrick Marsh, so we went to the Brazilian party instead. The long story short of this is that we saw a Brazilian band some months ago, and during their break I asked the guy who played a little instrument like a ukulele about playing it. He said it was tuned like a mandolin, so I said, "Then I could just pick it up and play it," and he said first go to the Brazilian drumming class. The teachers from this class said the band would be throwing a party tonight, so we went and had Brazilian food while listening to the band play what they call "bar samba" because it's quieter than the loud drums. I mean, it has drums, but not such loud ones. This was a very happy party with every color of person you can imagine at it, and a lot of people talking in Portuguese. We danced a little, then when the band took a break, I talked to that same guy and said okay, I've done Step One, what's Step Two? It turns out there is no Brazilian jam session like the Irish ones in town, but he said they are thinking of starting them. Sometimes I think I'm the luckiest person ever, and other times I think no, I make my own luck, but the real answer may be that I am open to the opportunities God gives me. Anyway, I need to learn the Brazilian rhythms well, and when I said the teacher is always using me as a negative example, this guy said he only does that to people he sees potential in, because he doesn't want to discourage the people who are struggling, so I thanked him for telling me that. It does make me feel better.

When we got home, there was a beautiful sunset, so we went on the dock to enjoy it.

I did take some photos of flowers we saw at the marsh today, so I may post those tomorrow. Blogspot seems upset about the number of photos on this post and stopped letting me post them at one point until I saved, closed, and came back into the post. No need to antagonize it further.

Famous Hat