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

Lots of Big White Birds

 

This morning Travalon and I had our leftover pasta for breakfast, along with some eggs and those hotel waffles I try to avoid. However, this morning they just smelled too good, and we couldn't resist. Thus fortified, we headed off to the Necedah Wildlife Refuge, where we have always had good luck seeing whooping cranes.

On the way to the Nature Center at Necedah is a patch of marsh where a pair of whooping cranes used to nest, but there was no sign of a whooping crane (or anything else) there today. We continued on to the Nature Center and took a walk on the path that goes on two different boardwalks, where we saw a number of swans. I think, judging by the sound they make, that they are tundra swans.

We also saw lots of blooming lupines.

And blooming wild indigo.

Here is a patch of lupines. The color is between blue and lavender and so pleasing to the eye.

What are these weird stripes? Contrails?

This is a goose family.

And here is what the boardwalk looks like as it zigzags through the marsh.

When we got back to the nature center, we sat watching the bird feeder, hoping to see a pileated woodpecker. We never saw one, but we did see a red-headed woodpecker.

And some bluejays.

Beneath the feeder were a bunch of red-winged blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds.

Here are a red-winged blackbird and two grackles on the feeder.

The red-headed woodpecker landed in a nearby tree.

Then we took a very sketchy gravel road, hoping to get to a causeway. At one point there was a sketchy bridge over a creek, and Travalon got out to inspect it, but he deemed it safe to drive over, and it held up just fine. Finally we got to our crossroad, and it was paved! Better yet, it leads to another paved road, so in the future we can go into this part of the preserve without taking the scary gravel roads. We did find the causeway and drive over it, and we saw a lone whooping crane.

I am guessing this is one of the single females that left Horicon in hopes of finding a mate. We parked and walked on some of the Lupine Loop path, although parts of it looked tick-laden. (I did find three ticks on myself this weekend. Yikes!) We came to a really remote part of the marsh, full of water lilies.

There was a tiny island. It really felt like a place nobody had ever seen before, though of course this was some sort of service road so obviously park personnel have seen it before.

There was a swan on the far side of the water.

Another view of the island.

I said that while I like being around people and can't imagine living somewhere so remote, I love visiting places where there are no other people around, and Travalon agreed. Then we drove back, and the whooping crane was gone, although we had heard her calling so we assumed she hadn't gone far. We drove on the paved road and went all the way around to the main entrance again to get to the observation tower. From up there we could see a whooping crane. The same one? Another one?

Travalon took a lot of photos of swans from the observation tower, but most didn't really turn out. This one did appeal to me.

There was even a whooping crane on the far side of the marsh, but that photo is really blurry. Then we went back to the nature center, and Travalon laughed when he saw this trash panda on one of the bird feeders. It bolted when it saw him, then it hid and watched him.

Merlin says this is a female rose-breasted grosbeak.

The mammals were really trying to take  over the bird feeders!

Merlin says this brown bird is a female brown-headed cowbird.

And here are a couple of photos of the bluejay.

I can't tell what this bird is, but I love that it has an insect in its mouth.

Here it is enjoying this other kind of bird feeder.

You can see some swans from the visitor center.

We had "lunch" at around six at a Chinese buffet in Mauston, so it was just dinner since we had such a substantial breakfast. As we drove home, I saw a rainbow around the sun, but the edge is a bit cut off since I was taking this from a moving car.

Still, a very cool effect. We stopped in Sauk, and Travalon saw one lone pelican at the dam.

Where did all the others go? Then we went to the VFW Park to keep alive our tradition of visiting a memorial on Memorial Day.

I had said to Travalon that today we only saw two of the Big White Birds, lots of swans and at least two whooping cranes, but then I remembered that yesterday we saw an egret and tons of pelicans (plus the one at Sauk), so it really was a Four Big White Birds Weekend. Those are my favorite kind.

Famous Hat