Horicon Marsh, Wheeler Road, and Irish Fiddling

 

This morning Travalon and I got going relatively early (for us, on a Saturday) and headed to Horicon Marsh. I really wanted to see a gallinule and a yellow-headed blackbird, but we almost always see those on Old Marsh Road, which isn't open until June. (Though we found out it was open for a few days around Earth Day.) In the first pond on the auto tour, where we often see egrets, we saw a pair of swans.

From the boardwalk, we saw lots of nesting Canada geese, often on top of muskrat lodges.

We even saw a nesting pelican! Why is it ignoring that egg in front of it?

We also saw turtles.

And blue-winged teals.

We saw barn swallows and tree swallows, but Travalon only got photos of barn swallows. He has taken photos of tree swallows in the past. They're more of a greenish-blue up top and white below.

Lots of trilliums were blooming.

I did see something sad - one may apple had both of its leaves missing! The bud was still there. How will it survive? None of them are in bloom yet.

We saw the nesting pelican from another angle.

As we drove along the auto tour, we saw a cute little gallinule.

And a pair of blue-winged teals.

I wanted to drive along Highway 49 because we often see coots there, and decades ago when I was in college, a roommate told me her class had gone to Horicon Marsh and seen baby coots, and that they are bright red and fluffy. I have seen photos online, and the fluffy redness is only around their heads - the rest of them is black. Still, I'd love to see one, but they hide in the reeds. We were, however, pleasantly surprised to see (and hear!) several yellow-headed blackbirds.

 

And on a tree on an island, we could see a cormorant rookery!

And we also saw baby Canada geese.

And a pair of red-headed ducks.

We saw plenty of adult coots, but no babies, alas.

And we saw a pied-billed grebe.

And three northern shovelers just chillaxin.'

More shots of the yellow-headed blackbirds.

Here he is "singing" - it sounds like he's being strangled.

We had a quick lunch at Taco Bell in Waupun and drove home so I could go to the red-headed flute player's house to play Irish tunes with her and Famie. My brain wasn't running on all cylinders today, but we did know a lot of the same tunes, so it was easy to play together. The flute player has a beautiful white German shepherd, and she was also watching her sister's whippet, so we had an audience. Were they appreciative? Hard to say.

Since we had already missed the Union picnic and the Kentucky Derby parties happening around town, Travalon and I went to the ponds on Wheeler Road and saw more wood ducks.

There was also a pair of blue-winged teals. I don't know why the female has her head at such an odd angle. At first I thought she didn't have a head!

Wood ducks and teals peaceably sharing a branch.

Two pairs together!

And a female hooded merganser was hanging around them. She was hard to photograph because she kept diving - this was the best of the three photos Travalon took of her.

A guy saw us looking at the pond, and he asked if we were looking at the beavers, but we saw no beavers, nor even signs of beaver occupation. Then we checked out the place I believe they are moving my park and ride to, which is not nearly so convenient because I have to go south to leave - you can't make a lefthand turn from there - and there isn't a bus stop right there like there is at our current parking lot. After that we checked out the rail yard, and that was pretty cool. There was an engine that was running its motor, but it wasn't moving. Then we came home, and I did DuoLingo for an hour. I actually got this little movie yesterday morning but forgot to post it.

Even though we had an early evening, I am still blogging late at night. Nobody is better at wasting time in the evenings than I am.

Famous Hat

May Day Strike

 

Today I was going to take the shuttle down to campus, but I was on strike, so instead of going to work, I was going to go to a pancake breakfast at the place we used to go to for Slow Food dinners. However, I missed the shuttle by just a minute or two, which is odd because I should have seen it leaving, but there was no sign of it. Fortunately the good ol' Big Bendy B Bus came by a few minutes later, and it dumped me off several blocks east of where I needed to go before it turned south. A couple of non-bendy buses had passed us, and I was bummed because they went by where I needed to go, so I was about to walk when a Big Bendy F Bus stopped, so I hopped on it... until the next stop. The pancake breakfast was a leftist dream, and while I found the vegan sausage delicious, I was not as excited about the vegan options for cream in my coffee. I had a pancake AND a waffle and some fruit as well, then I sat with my Union peeps and we listened to some rousing speeches. Little kids made signs and got their faces painted, and it was a very festive atmosphere. 

Several dozen of us walked over to a grassy spot on campus and had a campus-specific anti-ICE protest, with more speeches, then we walked over to Library Mall to join a much larger protest that included public school teachers and high school students, since they were all on strike. Here are a couple of photos.

There was an inflatable rainbow, and a Cookie Monster holding a cookie that said "Eat the Rich," but I couldn't get photos of them. We had a big banner that said "Local 171," and we were with some students (including my Irish class buddy I saw yesterday) who had an "ICE Out UW" banner. They had those of us with banners line up as the protest was winding down, and then a papier mache dragon went by too fast for me to get a photo, with a guy dressed as an Aztec warrior dancing in front of it. That was way cool. We started marching up State Street, and we were toward the front of the crowd. I peeled off briefly to powder my nose at my old church, and then I could see how huge the crowd was behind us. We chanted as we went along, and then up at the Capitol we went up the stairs and stood with our banners, while a mariachi band played at the top of the stairs. We could see the rest of the crowd coming up State Street. Wow! I saw the Irish fiddler, and a guy from the Brazilian drumming collective, and then my Irish teacher said she was in the crowd, so we found each other and stood together in the grass. (I actually sat for a bit, since I'd been standing for hours at that point.) People were handing out free sandwiches, but I had brought my own cheese sandwich, so I ate it. There were a lot more speeches, and a lot of the crowd drifted off, but my Union peeps and I stuck it out to the end. Then I caught the Big Bendy B Bus back to the parking lot where my car Noelle was, and as I got there, the B Bus going the other way came, and the shuttle arrived too, so a whole bunch of people got off and drove away as I was making my way back to my car. Then I came home, did the laundry, and had no more energy to do anything except talk to Tiffy. Hopefully tomorrow I have enough energy to go to Horicon Marsh.

Speaking of bird parties, Travalon saw one at those ponds on Wheeler Road today. Check out all the different birds he saw!

There were wood ducks, blue-winged teals, at least one mallard, a snowy egret, and a great blue heron. Did you catch them all?

Famous Hat