Sad News about the White-Headed Goose

 

I forgot to post this previously, but Travalon bought me another miniature backpack at the Mid-Continental Railway Museum. Niko fits into this one easily, but it's a bit large for him to carry on his back. However, I have other stuffed animals that could use this backpack, and I love the cheery colors of the train pattern.

This morning Jilly Moose picked me up, and we drove to Columbus to meet Anna Banana II at Julie's Cafe, since we had enjoyed it so much yesterday. Today Anna Banana II and I split a chocolate croissant and a piece of pistachio cake, and we decided we like the treats there so much because they are not overly sweet. Then the three of us hopped into Anna Banana II's rental car and drove to Horicon Marsh. The first thing we saw when we parked near the boardwalk is that we were parked next to a twin car!

We walked on the boardwalk and saw several egrets. Jilly Moose took some photos with her phone.

Here you can see why the blue-winged teal is so aptly named:

This mallard drake was shaking his booty at us:

And we saw some turtles too.

We saw a woman with a very long camera lens looking at something, so we went over and talked to her. She had just taken a photo of a sora, and she showed it to us. Soras are very elusive, and I have never seen one, but I hear their laughing call all the time in the marsh. Then we went into the woods and saw lots of forest flowers. Here you can see an older trillium bloom that has turned pink with a newer, fresher, white one behind it.

And the May apples were in bloom!

This is one I noticed several weeks ago, where something had eaten off the two leaves. It seems to be just fine - you can see that it grew two new leaves, and the flower is open.

We continued on the auto tour and saw a gallinule. I tried to take a picture of it with Jilly Moose's phone, but it didn't look like much since it had its back to us. We also saw pelicans in the first pond along the auto tour, but they were too far away to get a good photo with a cell phone. And we saw some goose families, but the babies are getting bigger now - they are not the tiny fuzzy things we saw a couple of weeks ago.

We drove along Highway 49 but didn't see any yellow-headed blackbirds this time. We did stop to admire the two trees full of cormorants, and we stopped at the visitors' center that looks like a pagoda, where they told us today people had seen a whooping crane along the auto tour, and that some yellow-headed blackbirds were nesting near the historical marker on Highway 49. Since we had looked very carefully for both things in those exact locations, we concluded they just weren't making an appearance at that moment. We stopped for lunch at the Subway in Mayville and then went to the other visitor center, where I bought a hoodie. The woman working there said the white-headed goose was shot by a hunter ("harvested," she said), and she seemed happy about it - "He was a hybrid of a farm goose and a Canada goose and didn't belong in the marsh," she said. "He had a mate, but he was infertile and wasn't producing any offspring." I suppose from a conservation standpoint he was an abomination, but he was a living thing and a lot of fun to see. At least he had a relatively long, happy life in the marsh.

On the way back to Columbus, we stopped at Schultz's Cheese Haus, then Jilly Moose dropped me off at home and I went to Adoration before joining a lot of people at Rich's house for dinner. He made lasagna and Anna Banana II made shepherd's pie, and people brought sides. The guy who usually makes fabulous desserts made a delicious semolina cake. For some reason there was a bottle of peppermint schnapps on the table, and when I asked Rich why, he looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, "If I ever buy a new house, I'll have a train running along the table to bring things to the people at the other end." So I'm guessing he hadn't heard my question, since his answer made no sense. I felt tired and turned into a pumpkin at nine. It's been a very social few weeks, and I just ran out of steam. Tomorrow I should be back to wanting to see people.

Famous Hat