Jamming at the Choro Session

 

Today I was back at work, but from home. (It was bad enough when that alarm went off at 8:00. Don't know how I'll survive tomorrow's alarm at 7:00.) Mostly I waded through emails, and the colleague who was covering for me called me on her day off to say she couldn't tell me what she had done while I was gone because the information wasn't in front of her. Um... thanks? Travalon and I walked at Jackson's Landing over my lunch break, but otherwise there wasn't much to blog about.

However, this evening at choro was really fun. I got there a bit early, and three young people were playing "Hungarian Dance #5" by Brahms on a cello, violin, and accordion. It turns out the cellist is a student at the university, and the other two were musicians on a cruise ship - but in different bands - who decided after that gig to drive across the country together. They have to get to the west coast by Friday for a gig. Wow, were they good! Then they left to find some dinner, and only the leader of the choro session came, not the guy from the Handphibians who has always been there, and not a really good guitarist who has always been there. At least the music club owner played the cello, and the cellist played the bass. Then another mandolin player who had been there last time arrived, so it felt like a critical mass... and then the two cruise ship musicians returned and joined us, and that was amazing. We didn't have the music for "Tico Tico," the most well-known choro tune, but one guy had a chord sheet, and some of the others knew it, so they all jammed on it. Eventually I joined in too, playing whatever notes I could identify or at least something in the right key. That was so much fun! The two guys said they found out about the music club when one of them needed a repair to his instrument, and when they asked the instrument repair shop people about the music scene in Madtown, they got referred to the music club, so they came to check it out. It's intimidating to play with musicians who are so much better than I am, but it's fun too.

As promised, here are some more photos from yesterday. First, some plants at Necedah: field wormwood, shamrocks (yes, they are invasive, and they were all over), and columbine.

This fungus growing on a dead tree was so interesting-looking.

More scenes from Necedah. I'm not sure what the yellow flower flower is; my phone said it had some long scientific name like lithospermum but didn't give a common name. And it said the photo I posted yesterday that I thought was a catbird was a northern mockingbird. Maybe it was mocking the song of a rose-breasted grosbeak, because that is what Merlin thought it heard, but all we saw was that bird.

And more photos from Horicon: a swallow, a May apple blossom, a muskrat lodge, and a red-headed duck.

More shots of the cormorant with the fish in its beak:

And another shot of the mama mallard with babies.

I did forget that as we were driving back toward downtown Necedah from the preserve, we saw a train. Travalon noted that it was the tenth one we'd seen that weekend. Then tonight, as I was walking back to my car from the choro session, I saw a Wisconsin and Southern engine with three cars crossing Winnebago. What a cute little train!

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Necedah and Horicon in One Day

 

This morning Travalon and I set out for the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, where you are pretty much guaranteed to see a whooping crane, as far as we can tell. We had lunch at a Chinese buffet in Mauston and then got to the refuge, where we checked out the bird feeders behind the main building, which had been a great place to see birds on our last trip there. This time they apparently hadn't filled the feeders, so there was no action. (There was no toilet paper in the women's bathroom either - but fortunately plenty in the men's bathroom - so it seems like someone there is falling down on the job.) Of course it got late, so I will just post a few photos tonight and will post more tomorrow, since I'll be working from home and may not have much to say.

First we took the boardwalk hike and saw swans, baby geese, spectacular clouds, lovely ferns, blooming wild indigo, and what looks like a catbird.

We kept hearing a weird sound near the main building, and I wasn't sure if it was a swan trumpeting or someone honking their car horn, but we realized it was actually this weather vane.

We also saw tons of blooming lupines.

I also saw a couple of tiny, periwinkle-blue butterflies, but they were too hard to get a photo of. Then we went up on the observation tower and saw swans, mallards, sandhill cranes, and a whooping crane in the distance.

We took the one paved road that goes deep into the preserve and then drove over the causeway. There was a sign that seemed to imply it was a goose resort.

Do they rent towels and umbrellas? Here is a view from the causeway.

Last time we were there, we saw a whooping crane back there, but today we just saw water and trees.

We decided it would be fun to go to Horicon on the same day, so we drove and drove, picking up some food at Kwik Trip for a picnic before hitting the boardwalk. The first thing we saw was a mallard drake with an abandoned goose egg that has been there for weeks.

This is a female red-winged blackbird:

This is a Homo Sapiens who is married to Travalon.

In the woods, the May apples are still in full bloom.

On the rest of the auto tour, we saw a pied-billed grebe, goose families, and a pair of swans.

Then we drove slowly along the edge of Highway 49 as the sun set. We saw the cormorant rookery.

The red-headed ducks were particularly colorful in the light of the setting sun.

We saw this cormorant with a fish in its mouth.

The sunset was beautiful.

Another pair of swans.

A couple of male northern shovelers.

A pied-billed grebe.

A mother mallard with babies.

I took this photo with my phone of the sunset afterglow reflected in the water.

I heard the yellow-headed blackbirds but never saw any. Then for some reason Travalon's car hooked up to my phone instead of his, so we listened to my music on the way home, and Travalon had to listen to me singing along. We got home pretty late, and I have to work tomorrow for the first time in over a week, so that ought to be a shock to my system. But was it worth it? Heck yeah!

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