Driving Research and Ukulele Strum

 

Today I felt very unfocused at work, although I did manage to get quite a bit done. We had another meeting, and by the end I felt irritable and just wished everyone could shut the heck up. But I did have a fun experience this morning doing a research study on driving systems. It was like a video game where you drove, only at a certain point the car could take over and then you were supposed to do a second task while the car drove for you. At the end I got an Amazon gift card, then I was walking back to my office and saw all the preschoolers in the campus daycare playing in the sunshine. I noticed one little boy looking at me intently, so I glanced at him and he did look familiar, and then I realized he was the son of one of my bandmates. I said his name and he kind of ran off, but he seemed to be giggling so I don't think he was that scared or anything.

Meanwhile, Travalon took some photos of birds. Here are Tux Duck and his lovely wife.

He saw another Tux Duck at Mendota County Park, but he only had his cell phone.

He saw pelicans around the little island in Cherokee Marsh. You can see how they move in sync while doing their cooperative fishing.

Eek! I wouldn't get this close to them! Those things are HUGE!!

Travalon made a cool video of them swimming in a line along the shore of the island, which I will try to put on YouTube and post here soon.

At work he supervised the small children doing art projects. This first one is a cartoon by a kid who never wants to be at the club. "After all these years" - he's seven!

He made it double-sided.

This one is labeled "My brother" in Spanish.

This one is labeled "Me and Too." No idea what that means.

After work I went to the Lone Girl for the monthly ukulele strum, wearing my ukulele T-shirt and ukulele earrings. As we were playing, a train went by right outside and blew its horn in an entirely different key. Even though I only get to strum once a month, I am improving and can now play a number of chords without too much difficulty. It's funny that E7 is a pain on the ukulele, because it is on the mandolin too. It's the main reason I don't like playing in the key of A major. (A minor is fine on both instruments.) Wait, maybe A minor also uses an E7 - I'm probably thinking of modal tunes, where the other main chord is a G. We never play anything modal on the ukuleles, mostly old rock and country tunes with a 1-4-5 chord structure, and a few weirder chords thrown in today, but I'm having to sit out less and less chords. Progress! Then Travalon came up to hear us, and afterwards we had dinner. Always a pleasant evening out.

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Wood Ducks in the Trees

 

This morning Travalon was sitting out on our porch, and he called me: "There's a big bird in the tree!" So I came out onto the porch and saw our local wood duck pair sitting in one of the trees outside our condo. Travalon's good camera was sitting right there, so he grabbed it, but the battery was dead so he had to take photos with his cell phone.

We can never seem to photograph these two, and then when they were posing right in front of us, the camera didn't work. What bad luck.

I actually got this yesterday, so it's some delayed DuoLingo bragging:

I worked on campus and went to the monthly Bach concert over lunch. Today they did one of my very favorite (and seasonally appropriate) cantatas, "Christ Lag in Todesbanden." To my surprise, as I was leaving, I ran into one of the leaders of Moldy Jam. I said, "I had no idea that you liked this kind of music!" and he said he used to play a lot of Baroque music. Then I ran into two bus buddies on my way back to work, and we complained about Dear Leader. It's hard to believe he is badmouthing the Pope, but there is no depth he won't stoop to. Someone said it's because he resents God, since he doesn't want anything higher than him, or anyone worshiping anything besides him, and that's why he throws tantrums on all major Christian holidays, besides posting AI images of himself as the Messiah. That tracks. Also, the Pope is the most-respected public figure by Americans according to a recent poll, and Colbert is second. That tracks too. Then in the afternoon I walked with Seabird, since we hadn't walked at lunch. She keeps telling me how thin I'm looking these days.

Travalon went to Stricker Pond, and he saw a great blue heron:

The weather was much better today, but our chair was leaving a bit before I was and said it was looking bad out there. His window faces west; my office faces east, and I didn't see anything other than harmless-looking clouds, but I did sneak out a few minutes early and just beat the rain. Now there's a flood watch - will it ever end? I thought April showers were supposed to bring May flowers, not disasters.

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Nonstop Crazy Weather

 

Yesterday I worked from home, and on my morning break Travalon and I went down to the dock to see birds, then he went to Cherokee Marsh to see more birds. Here are photos. First, some pelicans flew overhead as we were heading to the dock.

This mourning dove was hanging out on the dock.

Travalon did get a photo of the wood ducks, but it's hard to see. They always take off flying before we even know they're there.

And the pelicans landed on the water and then flew away again.

I just like how green this mallard's head looks.

Here are a pair of blue-winged teals.

And one male.

These photos are by the island in Cherokee Marsh. The pelicans like to hang out there.

Zoomed out so you can see the island.

And of course, some northern shovelers.

At lunch we went out again and saw Tux Duck striding along our neighbor's dock.

In the evening Travalon and I went to Flix Brewhouse, because I had free vouchers for the Wisconsin Film Festival, and we wanted to see The Christophers, starring Ian McKellen. Last year we had no problem getting into the film we wanted to see, but this time we had to wait in a long line, just behind a Union peep of mine and a couple of film students who could get in free with a valid student ID. Finally they let us in to sit right up in the front row, which was a weird perspective, but Ian McKellen was excellent as a famous artist well past his prime whose offspring hire an art restorer to forge some paintings of his. I really enjoyed the movie, but we did get home late. Then, as we were getting ready for bed, I heard a strange noise outside, like a huge vehicle was going by. I realized it was the wind and decided I'd better unplug my phone charger so it didn't explode or something if lightning hit our building... and then I saw on my phone that there was a tornado warning until one a.m. We never heard any sirens... We don't have a basement in our building, and our condo is on the second floor, so we went downstairs and huddled in the hallway around a corner from all the windows until one. Then I fell into bed and went right to sleep.

Today I worked from home again, and during my break I went with Travalon down to the dock. There was a single male ring-necked duck. Usually they hang out in groups of at least three.

There were a couple of geese honking away on our dock.

I hope they aren't still hanging around right in front of our boat slip once boating season starts!

There was a tornado watch in the late afternoon, so I emailed the guy who runs the adoration chapel, and he said it would be the safest place to be during a tornado. I'm not disputing that, but it's the getting there and back that concerned me. Toward the end of my work day it grew very dark out, and I was sitting out on our porch until some lightning struck very close by, then I went in. It began to rain, and then it began to hail, and then, not long after I got done with work, my phone shrieked at me so I picked it up and saw there was a tornado warning until six. That is when my adoration hour starts, but I was hiding in the downstairs hall again, praying a rosary down there, and then I could hear tornado sirens in the distance.

Meanwhile, Travalon got to go home early due to the bad weather, but then he got a flat tire, so he made it to a garage just before the hail started. (My car is in the garage, so it was fine.) Around six things cleared up, and he took an Uber home. I heard a very long train go by, and I went outside for a walk. There were so many birds singing, but there was still thunder in the distance. My phone said there was a flash flood warning, and still a tornado watch, but things stayed relatively quiet while I led Night Prayer tonight. Most people were talking about the loud wind last night, and how scary it was, but several people slept right through it. Some people are in other states, so of course they didn't hear the storm. There was a little Catholic church in a town near here that sustained a lot of damage, but this morning when I walked around our neighborhood, all I saw were twigs all over the ground, no big branches, and then a big wasp nest on the ground, which I really didn't feel bad about. I do hope Tux Duck and the other birds are okay. When I went for a walk this evening, there were piles of marble-sized hail all over, and other people said they had even bigger hail in their yards. Just now it sounds like another thunderstorm is starting, so hopefully we don't have to go hide out in the hallway tonight. I have to work on campus tomorrow so I need my sleep.

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A Tale of Two Marshes: Patrick and Horicon

 

Today after Mass there was a Care for Creation meeting, so Travalon had to take the plastic for recycling over to Pick N Save on his own. This set us back a bit in our schedule to go to Horicon Marsh today, and we stopped by Patrick Marsh first. It was very windy, and at first we didn't see any birds, but then we realized they were out there, it was just harder to see them among the waves. Travalon did manage to get some good photos, but in some of them the birds were behind or under the waves. First, I believe this is a juvenile Bonaparte's gull.

We saw two loons. This one was a lot closer to us.

There were a pair of canvasbacks and a pair of red-headed ducks swimming together. Travalon unfortunately never got a good photo of the male canvasback, but here is the female.

And here is the male red-headed duck.

There was also a tiny horned grebe swimming around and constantly diving.

Here is the loon again.

There were also buffleheads, common mergansers, red-breasted mergansers, and a pied-billed grebe, but those photos are from further away or not as clear. Oddly, no pelicans - there are often dozens of them in Patrick Marsh.

Then we drove to Horicon Marsh and saw egrets in the pond at the start of the scenic drive.

We also saw a pair of ring-necked ducks and a pair of red-headed ducks in the pond.

We walked on the boardwalk and saw northern shovelers.

This poor male blue-winged teal was being blown around by the wind. His mate is just to the right of this photo.

This red-winged blackbird tried to fly away as we approached, and the wind blew him right back into the rope he'd been sitting on! So Travalon was able to get an extreme close-up of him.

It began to rain, so we hurried back to the car and continued on the scenic drive. We saw a pair of swans, which I am assuming are trumpeter swans because they were quiet, their necks are dirty, and they appear to be a breeding pair. Tundra swans are noisy, hang out in big crowds, and don't get dirty necks, and they do not breed this far south.

As we drove through the town of Horicon, we saw a bunch of train cars with beautiful graffiti.

We also saw this flock of turkeys hanging out by the tracks. This is only part of the flock - there were at least twice as many as this.

Then, as we drove back toward Beaver Dam, we saw a flooded field with all sorts of birds hanging out in it. It was almost better than what we saw at Horicon! We saw a pied-billed grebe and not one but two black-necked stilts, as well as mallards and Canada geese which are not pictured because they are everywhere, including just off our dock.

Though I have to say that, this spring, I have seen way more shovelers than mallards. Are they actually surpassing them in population? I'm not sure they stay here to breed, which the mallards do so we see them all summer and even in the winter, hanging out in the places where the water doesn't freeze over completely. 

After that we went to Columbus to see if we could watch a train pass by, but we had missed the Amtrak by about half an hour, and no freight train went by in the few minutes we waited. Travalon tried to find a free train tracking app, but he didn't have any luck. By then it was too late to bother with band practice, but I had already warned them that I didn't know what time we'd get back to town so I might not make it.

One thing that was frustrating was that my FitBit didn't give me credit for a workout when we walked on the boardwalk, so back home I walked around while listening to music and still didn't get credit. I checked my settings, and the setting to notify me of a workout was turned off for some reason, so I turned it back on and went into the app, and I'd gotten credit for a workout for both walks. Whew! How the setting got turned off, I have no idea. Weird things would happen to my FitBit if I showered with it on, so I've been taking it off while I'm in the shower for ages. Also, the gift card I was supposed to get via email in fourteen days, so by today, never came. I was about to email them when I reread it and realized it said fourteen BUSINESS days, so they have until Thursday. Hopefully the Belleek castle tower is still available on eBay by then...

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