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This morning I met a friend for brunch, and on the way there and back I listened to Jewbacca in the car. It was a very sunny day with little traffic, so the drive was wonderful. I found myself wishing that I played with this jazz band that hasn't existed for a quarter of a century, and I often feel that way when at an early music concert, thinking why didn't I practice the violin more so that I could play with them? It's like I can't just sit back and enjoy the music anymore. Then I realized this feeling started after the pandemic, when my choir disbanded and my band didn't practice as regularly. We haven't practiced in months, but supposedly we are getting together next month to start practicing for gigs in May and June. Maybe I just want to be part of a different band, a band that plays more klezmer music. We have a few songs from when Hardingfele and I went to Klez Camp and joined the huge klezmer band, but somehow they keep dropping out of our set list in favor of Norwegian waltzes, and I really don't know why. Our audience members seem to like the klezmer pieces too. It must be someone else in the band who doesn't like them.

Today Travalon and I went out to Sauk to look for eagles. Now that it's Lent and I have given up buying things I don't need, we avoided the antiques shop. I have also given up sugar, so we also avoided the Mixing Bowl bakery. That left eagle watching, and from the VFW Park we could see an eagle perched in a tree across the river.

Here is the bluff across the river.

Of course we went to the dam too. We saw a young eagle flying overhead.

And here are more bluffs across the river.

We drove along the south shore of Lake Wisconsin. Here are the two little islands.

This bluff behind the larger island is Owl's Head Bluff, on the north shore of the lake.

People have been posting photos of the tundra swans having returned to town. I haven't seen any in our neighborhood, although I have seen and heard the cranes. They usually return on the first of March, so they're a bit early this year. Travalon and I went to the open water by the Tenney Locks, and we saw lots of Canada geese and mallard ducks (and a woman feeding them). We did see one grumpy swan, that kept picking on the geese around it for no obvious reason.

Maybe it was grumpy because it's alone. I said maybe it lost its mate, and Travalon said it was a crotchety old bachelor swan. We watched it go toward the geese and then chase them away several times. After all, a swan is nothing but a bigger, meaner, whiter goose, and geese can be quite nasty in their own right. Then again, all of them ain't nothin' but updated dinosaurs. I read once that the birds that are least evolved are the ones in the chicken family and the ones in the duck/goose/swan family, so they are the ones most like dinosaurs. They are also the tastiest birds, so maybe dinosaurs were delicious. I'm guessing they were.

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