Misty Day in the Marshes

 

Today was an overcast, misty day, so Travalon and I headed to Horicon Marsh. We figured there would be more birds out and about than on a hot sunny day, and there would be less humans around too. We started at the hill overlooking the whole marsh.

As we drove back down the hill, we saw this whitetail deer.

Next we went to the part where we often see the white-headed goose. At first we didn't see any geese, but we did see this beautiful, iridescent blue swallow.

We walked down by the water and saw this female wood duck.

And a couple of cormorants.

The only geese we saw were a whole gaggle of them on the path.

Our next stop was Theresa Marsh. I was hoping to see the whooping crane again, and Travalon said, "At least if we don't see a crane, we'll probably see a train." There was a train that was almost past as we drove up, so we saw the last three cars. The first thing we saw in the marsh was this handsome great blue heron.

We saw a number of killdeer, which are very loud, but then all sandpipers seem to be.

And we saw these carp swimming through water so shallow that their backs were sticking out. Once they got past the shallow part, they swam really, really fast. I wish we had video of that.

Coolest of all, we saw a pair of bald eagles just standing on the ground.

When we got back to the start, the blue heron was still there. Note its breeding plumage.

After that we went to the Red Owl in Brownsville, and they had a little model Red Owl store inside.

Here is the sign outside the store.

We went to the path Cecil Markovitch had told us about, because last time we saw so many egrets there. Today as we walked along the path, we saw lots of these millipedes with yellow legs.

And we saw the teeniest little toad, with my finger for perspective.

We saw a family of swans with six cygnets.

And we did see plenty of egrets.

Here is an adult Canada goose with a teenage one that is still fuzzy but starting to have adult markings.

We saw these avocets flying around too, and then they landed. They were very loud, but again, that must just be a sandpiper thing.

We also saw these pinkish-beige birds about the size and shape of ducks, but they didn't seem to be ducks. They made a laughing call, but we only saw them in flight, and Travalon couldn't get a good photo of them. So here are some more egret photos.

In this photo, you can see the terns flying around the egrets.

Once in a while, you would see a red-winged blackbird chase an egret, even though they are so much larger, and at one point I saw one chasing a large white bird with black tips on its wings, so I think it was a whooping crane. Travalon didn't see it, so he handed me the camera to take a photo myself, but I couldn't focus on it. If I did see a whooping crane, then I saw all four Big White Birds today, because just then we saw a pelican fly by.

As we were leaving, we saw this plant that seems to be growing out of a metal tube.

We ended by going to the boardwalk. It was really drizzling by then, but plenty of terns were flying around.

They kept landing in the water, splashing around, and taking off again.

We saw this cute muskrat eating grass.

And I'm not sure what this pretty bird is. It seems to be not fully mature.

This looks like your standard female mallard on a muskrat lodge.

Then we saw three pelicans fly overhead in a graceful configuration.

We stopped for ice cream in Columbus, and the girl asked if I wanted one scoop or three of the coconut pineapple ice cream, so I said one. Travalon got a root beer float that was kind of small, which was a good thing because the girl must not have heard me, and she gave me a HUGE ice cream cone with three scoops. Fortunately Travalon was willing to eat half of it. Then we burned some of it off playing World War III. The secret club I'm in has homework every month, and this month it was to play a game we used to love as children. I couldn't think of anything until remembering that my brother and I used to play what we called "World War III," hiding behind the furniture and blowing wads of paper at each other out of drinking straws. I convinced poor Travalon to play this game with me when we got home, and he accidentally sucked the wad of paper into his mouth instead of shooting it at me, so he said he was like a Loony Tunes character, aiming at Bugs Bunny but shooting himself. I laughed so hard that I choked. We did get some good shots at each other, and then I went around cleaning up the spent ammo, so that hopefully burned some fraction of the ice cream off.

Famous Hat