I forgot to mention that last night Travalon and I watched the Badgers men's basketball team play Oregon. It was an exciting game with the two teams changing leads constantly, and the Badgers just barely won, so now they're on to the Final Four in Vegas. Today I was reading an article about them, and it said, "Nobody wants to be in the NIT," because it's considered the also-ran tournament for the big names who don't get into the Big Dance, aka the NCAA Tournament. However, there are small schools just big enough to be Division I who had really good records this year and didn't get into either tournament, and I'll bet they would love to have a post-season. Maybe instead of being the also-ran tournament for marquee names like Oregon and Wisconsin, it should be the tournament for the schools that had over twenty regular-season wins but didn't get a ticket to the ball, like the Troy University Trojans. I don't know what you have to do as a smaller school to get invited to the Big Dance; the second team we beat, Liberty University, won twenty-six games this season, which is an amazing record. At least they got into the NIT.
Travalon took more photos off the dock this morning, while I was at work on campus. (I thought I was ready to go back, but the day took it all out of me.) Here are some good shots of the common mergansers. The male is white with a black head, and the female is gray with a brown head. They both have bright red bills that are long and sharp for catching fish.
The male bufflehead is preening as the females look discretely away.
Still preening...
Finally got his look just right!
And here are some coots swimming around.
A decision must be made: should they go under the dock?
They do come to a decision, and they swim under the dock.
Finally, here are our friendly neighborhood dinosaurs, the sandhill cranes, in a neighbor's backyard.
I think this is the same yard where the owners sprayed the cranes with a hose to get them to leave, but it didn't work. The cranes hollered a little, but apparently they didn't mind getting sprayed that much, because they wouldn't leave. In my experience, if you don't want cranes somewhere, just wait two minutes and they will be gone. This has worked well for me in the past when they were, say, standing right in front of the door and I had no other way to get in. They don't stay still for very long, so you don't really need to move them - they'll do it for you themselves. Unless they find a puddle, and then all bets are off. They rival Peppa Pig in how much they love muddy puddles.
Famous Hat
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