Birdstud's Birdchat: Horicon Birding Festival 2017

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Horicon Birding Festival 2017

On a beautiful, sunny (if not a little windy) Sunday morning Barbara and I drove north to the sleepy little Wisconsin city of Horicon to experience one day of their 20th annual Bird Festival. The Horicon Marsh is the largest freshwater cattail marsh in the United States. It is over 33,000 acres and is managed jointly by the Department of Natural Resources and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It's a short one-hour drive from Milwaukee. The marsh as National Wildlife Refuge (established in 1941) is known for its vast flocks of Canada geese which migrate each year back and forth. One other important redeeming quality of the marsh is the over 300 other species of birds that can be seen throughout a typical year. That was the main reason Barbara and I were heading up there for a few hours of bird watching, and lots of fresh air.

The annual festival is predominantly staffed by the Horicon Marsh Bird club volunteers who put in countless hours with various bird hikes, talks, presentations and and events. Guided boat trips into the marsh specific to bird watching are available for purchase during the four-day festival. The tours fun May through September as well. Their newer Horicon Marsh Education and Visitor's Center is worth the drive in itself. It's chock full of interesting facts and informative displays. It has a fully stocked wildlife-centered gift shop and plenty of room to browse. The staff are extremely friendly and the building invitingly cozy.

Barbara and I spent some time walking the edge of the marsh near the Education Center. Since it was Mother's Day, there were more than a few families out on the nice day with mom in tow. Hopefully it was mom's idea. We saw many Purple martins, Tree and Barn swallows, Common yellowthroats, Song sparrows and Forster's terns as we walked. We were particularly taken with a tiny Killdeer fledgling who was being carefully watched by a wary parent. Their incredible camouflage factor was very apparent. So much so that if you took your eye off the baby bird for a moment, it was difficult to find it again. Killdeer are a plover which got it's name from the call it makes, "kill-deer." Killdeer make their nests on open ground, often in a gravel patch, path or driveway. These fortunately found safety on a small patch of marshland, just far enough out from the shore to provide them with a barrier to predators who were averse to swimming.

We walked along a gravel pathway next to open water, to a section of actual woodlands. Along the way we were treated to a passing muskrat and scads of squiggly, enormous carp sunning themselves at the water's edge in the rocks. Common grackles and Red-winged blackbirds squeaked and squawked among last year's cattails and Painted turtles could be found in large groups, sunning themselves on handy logs and floating vegetation. The whistling songs of the Scarlet tanager and Baltimore oriole kept us peering upward for a glimpse of their incredibly colorful beauty.

I (of course) purchased a new Horicon Bird Festival baseball cap from a nice woman at a table in the Visitor's Center. We also went into the gift shop and selected a nice refrigerator magnet and a new patch for my birding vest. Barbara has a "thing" for wooly mammoths. We found her a small stuffed mammoth to bring home to add to her collection. Why a wooly mammoth in the gift shop you ask? Well, it turns out that a woman once found an enormous petrified wooly mammoth tooth on the site, so why not erect a huge iron replica to honor that discovery.

While we were in the Horicon area I remembered that my cousin Scott Tillema and his wife Renee ran the Marsh Haven Nature Center on the north end of the marsh. Neither of us had never been there, so we drove north to find the center. When we arrived we parked and walked into the building. A nice man at the register explained the center and told us that Renee was just finishing up a bird talk and would be out in a few minutes. We paid the $3.00 entry fee and got our wristbands affixed before stepping into the facility's backrooms to look at their displays. We walked around investigating and looking for the room where Renee might be. With the assistance of another staff member, we found Renee. She was surprised to see us. She explained a bit about the center and what she was doing that particular day and weekend with the Bird Festival keeping everyone very busy. After we left her to go on to her next task with the public; we walked their trails out to an older wooden tower for a look.

We stopped by their home on the property to look for my cousin Scott and he was not home. They are in the process of building (rebuilding) various large wooden cages that will house a future raptor program on their property. The ground was in various stages of construction and piles of reclaimed cage-wall sections were in piles awaiting installation. We left with the dogs barking from inside the house, to the Horicon Marsh "Auto Tour" (bicycle tour) area and parking lot. We had eyewitness accounts of seeing Bobolinks. I love bobolinks and the crazy sounds they make. These predominantly black-colored (with white markings) spring-summer migrants look to me like they are wearing a crazy yellowish shower cap. I was quickly rewarded in the parking lot area with the sound and then sight of several in the field. Some of these migratory marvels can travel up to 12,500 miles from South America to their nesting grounds. We did then drive the entire auto tour through the site and were treated to a pair of Northern shovelers near enough to get a great view. I would highly recommend this tour on a bike; so be sure to bring some along if you go!

Please now enjoy more photos from our wonderful trip to the Horicon marsh: