Lake Wisconsin and Hauser Prairie

 

This morning Travalon still didn't feel too well, so we didn't head to the out-of-town funeral for his buddy's father-in-law. Instead, he watched Crystal Palace beat Bournemouth 3-0 with his posse.

We went to Stricker Pond, where we saw lots of scaups.

And a couple of buffleheads.

This is a really good photo of a male and a female scaup.

We stopped by the westside Willy Street Co-op and then, since it's right there, we had the buffet at Amber Indian Restaurant for lunch. After that we headed out to Sauk, and from the mountain bike path we could see pelicans gathered on a sandbar or just swimming around.

We also saw pelicans gathered around Sunset Island in Lake Wisconsin, and one swimming around.

At Whalen Grade we saw all sorts of waterfowl, like northern shovelers.

And more pelicans.

Also more scaups, but those photos were blurry because of the rain. (Did I mention that it rained all day?) And this male common merganser.

More northern shovelers.

And lots of coots too, which are not ducks but are actually more closely related to chickens.

Along Tipperary Road we saw a lot of red-breasted mergansers.

On the way home we stopped at Hauser Prairie to see if the pasqueflowers were blooming yet. It looked like they had just done a controlled burn, and all sorts of little green shoots were coming up, so we'll just have to check back later. I feel like this photo needs a trigger warning: what are these bones?? Did one of the volunteers at the burning not get out of the way of the flames fast enough??

I look like I'm surveying my realm.

It is a lovely view.

After that we came home and had a quiet evening. I had my leftovers from last night for dinner, and on Night Prayer we all had stuffies: Jilly Moose was hosting and she had Mr. Swanky, her most elegant moose; I had Jerry the Kraken; Anna Banana II had a bobcat; another woman had a lamb; and the one man on the Zoom meeting had Becky Badger, Bucky's girlfriend, who once had a cheerleading outfit but is now "naked." (She still has fur.) Meanwhile, Travalon relaxed. Hopefully he recovers quickly from this cold that he got from me. I'm almost back to normal but still can't sing, and I do have a lovely, nagging cough that sounds far worse than it is. Hopefully I'm done with viruses for a while.

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