The Shack

So we drove 4 hours to get to Leopolds Shack lastnight and OH MY GOSH IT WAS SO WORTH IT!!!!!

So this place is really like the Mecca for all Wildlife folk. We got there at the right time too, there was a tour going on it cost a little extra but it was awesome. We got to hear stories that Nina Leopold would tell. Sadly she died about 3 weeks ago so now his only living child is Estella and she is in Washington. One of the things Nina used to say that struck me was, "Why does everybody always want to go inside the shack? We spent maybe 5% of our time in there." The Shack was really interesting to be inside of though, there was hardly any room in there. They had 2 bunk beds for a 7 person family (mind you they didn't live there ALL the time or anything just weekends and holidays). We think of the whole family living in the chicken coop but infact the children built a tree house which they liked to sleep in and Leopold and his wife slept down by the river whenever possible. The shack also had a falcon perch in it, which I thought was awesome.

Random fact, the same year Leopolds youngest son had a hawk his youngest daughter had a pet squirrel. I imagine that would have been fun!

The property doesn't look like the way it did when he bought it either. They planted trees on the land which was an old farm. They did everything they could to restore this area to health back then and now it's healthy! It's too bad Aldo Leopold can't see it now, he would be so proud.

Me and The Shack



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The Sand County Sand!



I'M GOING TO THE SHACK TOMORROW!!!!!

Woot! My mother sent me a magic disk!

Computer is RUNNING!!! WOOT! Today I recieved a disk and a bunch of instructions on how to remove the virus from my PC. I fallowed about 2 of the steps on one of the sets of instructions, got confused, rebooted, and *POOF!* computers running! Do I understand it? Not one bit, but I'm not complaining! To make it an even better day my Ipod magiced itself back into existence! YAY!

Okay, now that I have gotten over my little technological magic mumbo-jumbo here's whats up!

Mrs. Fran Hamerstorm - A small rant on books and an awesome dead lady

I recently started reading Fran Hamerstorm books. She’s brilliant! She was the only female to work under Aldo Leopold. I guess I should probably explain who Leopold is first, Aldo Leopold is the father of conservation, not preservation, that’s John Muir. Aldo Leopold is wildlife ‘big shot’. If you’re involved in wildlife work you probably know about him. So Leopold was this awesome guy who had this little place in Wisconsin (see where this is going yet?) called The Shack. It was a converted chicken coop, and his families get away (and I’m pretty sure Crissa and I are going to visit it sometime soon!!). Fran Hamerstorm worked under him studying Prairie Chickens (not real sure what about them, haven’t gotten to that book yet). She was also a falconer and raptor rehabilitator. She wrote this book called “An Eagle to the Sky” which talks about her time rehabilitating and hunting with Golden Eagles. I picked this book up at the library recently and was just finishing it up on Sunday when John (the Wildlife Law Enforcement Officer that does nest destruction with us) came up to visit. Turns out he actually worked with her in the 1990’s on her Harrier project. He talked about her and told stories and talked about how she was the kind of lady who was always showing up the guys. He told me about how she called all her techs “Gaboons” and how she would never tell what exactly that meant. He talked about her meals and how you would never ask what the food was until after you ate it.  Anyways, I feel like this is the coolest thing possible and then today we went to this little new and used book store and I’m looking at nature books. I pull out a book by her open it to the front page and it’s SIGNED! It was so cool. I feel like she’s everywhere! I have 2 more of her books checked out from the library (one is from the 60’s and it looks like it’s literally decomposing but I love it anyways). So I’m set on books for a while, Thanks Fran!

 

Man that STINKS!

I believe the last time I posted was Thursday after my Cormorant Marathon. Well, at least that was the break in the race. Friday we went down to Waupon again to process the last of the birds and boy did they STINK! The last few times we had processed them they were smelly but it was okay, this time it was HORRIBLE! It’s later in the season and they’d been allowed to sit in the sun in black plastic bags for hours before they got into the freezer. It was horrible. One was so smelly I actually gagged, and it takes a lot to make me gag. HOWEVER, this was the last set of dead birds to process so we took a ton of pictures of ourselves doing every aspect of the work. At the end of my internship I have to do a power point talk on the experience and I wanted to make sure I had pictures for it. They’re a little silly because here I am in a hot pink shirt holding up pieces I cut off a dead bird. When did my life turn into this?

A Walk in the Park

It’s now Monday and I haven’t really worked since Friday just because we worked so much last week we’re sort of taking it slow right now. Saturday we went to the Fyr Bal (Fire Ball) festival and went on a lovely little hike around a small park and talked to a couple ladies who are working to designate Fish Creek (it’s a town) as a ‘Bird City’. Because we did extremely well we were given bracelets. Mine is pink and says Bird Buddy… I love it! Today we went to Peninsula State Park. We climbed to the top of Eagle Tower where you can overlook the bay and see a lot of little islands, it’s cool for everybody but it’s even cooler when you know the islands because they’re part of your work. We drove all over the park and took little birding hikes but the best part was after we left the park. We had heard from the bird city ladies that there was an osprey nest in town so we drove over and took a look. The Osprey was even sitting there just chilling! I was pretty excited, I know they’re not uncommon or anything but I love osprey they pick on Bald Eagles, anything with enough guts to pick on an eagle is cool by me. But actually, I still haven’t gotten to the cool part. We were driving home from the park and I saw my very first….. PORCUPINE!! Yup… it was that cool. J

Mysteries

Today is Friday, I can't believe that it's been a week since I really did much with Cormorants, my computer has had a virus, the weathers been poopy, and I've spent a lot of time reading. I've also been listening to some Books on Tape (Are they still called that even though everything is in MP3 format now?). I listened to a book called "Spider Bones" by Kathy Reichs. She's the author that inspired the TV show Bones. They books are mysteries the whole time you sort of have an idea what is going on, but not really. While listening to these books I have been analyzing photos from the game Cameras. The first one was kind of depressing because I was watching 10 or so nests from April until July and not a single chick fledged out of all of those nests. They'd be living and then there would be a disturbance (which was last summers field crew coming on to the islands to observe which they did at 3 seperate times) and ALL the nests were destroyed by Herring Gulls.  They'd lay again and two weeks later it happened again! Since it was the first camera I'd watched my heart was like "OH NO! Every time you step foot on the island you kill all the babies"

Well thankfully the second camera isn't so horrible, they got their nests started earlier so by the time the first crew came out many of the birds already had chicks that were big enough to defend themselves. So they're surviving! 4 nests lived through the first observation which means hopefully they'll live! It's funny I'm rooting for them like it hasn't already happened and like the dead ones might have a chance of making it... when they don't, this all took place last summer. I notice things about the birds, like they change the way they sit from when they're on eggs to when the chicks are born. Before the cameras were up (the photos I'm looking at are the first set) nobody knew quite what our effect on them was, it's really interesting from that standpoint to look at the cameras. It can be dull, but I actually like it!

Oop we're headed to meet up with Ken to look at bird bands for when we sample! Got to go, I'll add pictures to this post later!

So my computer has a virus

It's been a slow week and my computer has a virus so that's why you haven't heard from me, I do have a couple of posts 1 about Frances Hamerstorm (who is dead but still fallowing me) and the other about Peninusla State park and a Porcupine.

I have been analyzing game camera photos, I decided Herring Gulls are evil. I want my computer back :-(

The Cormorant Marathon

So it's been a few crazy days... actually it's been a lot of crazy days I can't believe it is Thursday! I don't know how to split up entries so we will see what this comes to.

Sunday- Call me Ishmael

So it wasn't the ocean or a whale but it was an adventure. In the morning we met up with John who is a wildlife law inforcement officer and Ken. We got the boat ready and we went to Hog Island for nest destruction. It was basicly a giant easter egg hunt that included getting pooped on! I was in a super good mood for the most part but it was alittle upsetting in my soul when we had to destroy nests with eggs in them. So this is how the day went. We arrived at the island and Ken went and counted all the nests there were over 500 Cormorant nests on the island. After the nests were counted Ken went to find Mute Swan nests while John, Crissa, and I destroyed the nests. I had two 5 gallon buckets which I collected the eggs from the nests while they went around with pitchforks and broke the nests up. I went through 25 gallons of eggs with the buckets. There were also other birds nesting on the island that we didn't want to disturb including 2 great blue herons and a nest of egrets. When we got close to those nest we just destroyed as fast as we could without collecting eggs. It felt all wrong but it is what it is I guess.



Monday- Tech by day mad scientist by night

We broke a part of the trailer Sunday so we went and tried to get it fixed but we needed to be home to make up necropsy sacks because we were picking up the birds from the USDA guys later that day. We drove up there around 5 pm and we were planning on processing 30 birds that day... We had no good location to do it so we did it somewhere outside, I'm not going to tell you where it was but it got dark before we were done! So here we are cutting up cormorants in a place we might not have been supposed to be in the dark. :-) It was fun but it got late and cold and I was covered in blood. The Mississippi crew showed up right as we were finishing. After we finished we docked the boat so it would be ready for the next morning ... at 2 am.

Tuesday/Weds- The Honey Bucket

Both days were a pretty much alike. We woke up and were on the islands by about 4am. The first day was spider the 2nd was pilot. On the first it was just Crissa and I, while the second was Katie, Crissa, and I. Tuesday we were on the island till 7, Wednesday we left at 4:30. We set up the blind, which isn't that hard once you do it once. You bungy the blind to the scaffolding and it looks like this.

Yes, those are all cormorants, okay well all the black ones are, the white ones are Herring Gulls... those are the ones that poop on you.

You put everything in your blind and you zip it up. The hardest part is getting it all done fast because the whole time you're moving around the gulls are ripping the young cormorants to pieces and eatting the eggs, it's brutal. It's funny because they're so cute when they're young.

Anyways, after we get in the blind we have till 6am to sit around, set up our stuff, read a book, freeze our tails off, all of the above. At 6 we start observing we're looking for birds with red bands on their legs, we then try to figure out what the bands say.

It's not that hard, the worst part is when there are no birds with bands to look at. By the way, yes I did take that picture through my spotting scope, that's why a lot of my pictures have a black circle around them. I had fairly slow blinds so I didn't see a whole lot of bands but it was still nice. It was just very, very long.

So a few things I have learned include;
Baby cormorants look like the alien that pops out of the guys stomach in the movie Alien, Herring Gulls are mean, White Pelicans are AWESOME, I don't mind sitting in a blind all day, and I don't want to pee in my "Honey bucket."

 

gr

Wind was too bad to go to the island yesterday soooo here lies hours of field cam analyzation

Dirty Jobs

The last few days have been less nutty. Sunday was another day off so we went hiking. The first place we went was a little park nearby; we spent awhile playing with the spotting scope while looking at a Common Merganser. After the Merganser left we went on a hike and there were about a million Lady Slippers it was beautiful. When we got through our hike we went to ‘The Clearing’ folk school. There was a guided tour of the area that was beautiful.

The Clearing is an art school type of thing. It was created by Jens Jensen who was born in Denmark and he wanted to create a place where people could come and relax and learn while being out in nature. Jensen was a landscape architect and the place is BEAUTIFUL.

Monday we sorted and labeled everything for the necropsies which was actually more fun than you’d think sorting and labeling could be then we left and made the drive back to Waupun.

Yesterday we went to the USDA office to do Necropsies on 23 dead Cormorants. Chip had set them out the day before so they were not frozen solid when we got there. We set out ten at a time so they would thaw a little more. The first bird Crissa processed pretty well by herself meanwhile informing me what she was doing so I could repeat the process.

On Monday we had put little necropsy packs together. Each contained 2 blood strips, 2 coin bags, and a baggy for eyes, patagium, and breast. Once we started to figure out how we were going to process the birds Crissa would bring over a bird, while I sorted out the baggies. I clipped the blood strips and sorted out the bags. When the bird was flopped on the table Crissa opened the bird to check gender. I took blood samples for both our research and the research being done in Mississippi, we also took samples for Mississippi from the mouth and the cloacae then put them in a little vile that we then froze. When we had those samples we’d rotate the bird Crissa would work on the eyes while I took skin samples. When we process live birds we will be taking 6mmx6mm samples from the Patagium skin. The patagium is an area between the shoulder and elbow that is above the bone. The area is almost clear and you can see the veins through the skin, it’s useful because you can avoid veins when you do the skin punch. With the dead birds we can take the whole skin piece. I would cut the flap of skin off both wings and a little bit of breast skin. One we had these samples we moved on to the next bird.



Laid to dry



Blood Samples

The eyeball!



 I had expected it to smell worse, and while the employees complained from time to time, I never smelt anything at all. Crissa was doing well in making sure she didn’t hit the stomach and I never hit the gizzard. The only time I really got a little grossed out was when I was taking samples from the mouth and for some reason the tongue had gotten detached from the mouth and it fell right out. We worked until it we had done all the birds we have this week. They’re doing more shooting next Monday and Tuesday so we’ll have 60 more then.

                 Today we messed around with the bow net we will be catching birds with later this season. I’ve used bow nets before on Hawks but compared to the one we’re using now is WAY small, maybe 3-4 feet instead of our 10ft. Either way I’d never set one up. We got a DVD from Northwood Falconry that showed us how to set it up but really it’s pretty simple. We also got 2 different remote triggers, one came with it even though I don’t think it was supposed to, and the other Crissa had brought. The one Crissa bought has an odd trigger but after messing around with it I think I got it stabilized. It has a tiny keychain remote trigger which will be great for field work while the other has a big remote but didn’t need any tweaking. We tried both remotes from different distances and came to the conclusion that they both were fine and that we should probably bring both remotes.

The one we have now

The one I've used before

Tomorrow a local guy who owns a charter boat company is taking me and Crissa out to Jack Island around 10am for observations. YAY! I'm so ready!... I think.

Sometimes I think owls want to help me as much as I do them

I'm not Native American at all but if I were I think the owl would be my spiritual animal.

Today was my day off so I decided to explore the areas around the campground. I've been running the trails pretty frequently but I hadn't seen all of them so I decided to cross the road and see the trails over there. I asked the lady (whos name was Susan) at the campground where the trail head was and went running.

I was wearing shorts and tennis-shoes and went into the woods. I was running for a while until I got to a point where there was a marsh on one side of me and about 200 meters ahead was a little bridge that crossed a stream... on the other side of the bridge there was no trail. I thought that maybe because the tourist season hasn't really started yet that it had just been grown over and went around trying to find where the path was. I found two feathers (I think were turkey but I'm not sure) picked them up and then put them back where they were and took some pictures. After I wondered around for about 30mins I refound the feathers that showed me back the way I came I stumbled back to the bridge and started for the trail when a big black dog started barking. I was on a run, and the dog was big, I REALLY wanted to run away.

I'm not scared of bears, I'm not scared of Coyotes, I don't think I'd like to come face to face with a wolf but I'd probably... probably be alright with that, I am VERY scared of pack-dogs. Ferrel pack dogs are mean and attack for no reason. I didn't know if this dog was tame or not, it had so much hair that I couldn't see a collar and I knew that there was atleast one other dog out there. Now that I know a little about the breed I think it was I think that I was perfectly safe but imagine having this



Not my picture, but very similar to the dog I saw

Barking at you, not so fun. Anyways... I stood my ground and tried my best to run it off like a bear, I stared it down and made lots of noise, which turned out to be a good thing to do since my noise brought the dogs owner over. He assured me that the dog was nice and made sure I was okay (I think i may have skipped mentioning that the dog made me cry :-p some animal lover I am) and pointed me back to the trail.

Apparently that marshy area is always there but it's not always that high, it was atleast ankle deep the whole way across the marsh to the trail on the other side. As  I mentioned earlier, here I am in shorts and sneakers getting eatten alive lost in the woods and then crossing a marsh... I have better clothes for that but no I was not prepaired at all. :-((

So I cross the thing still trying to stop crying and what happens next is awesome. I spooked up a Barred Owl. He flew from tree to tree infront of me until I got to the beach area. He was beautiful. I don't think I've ever felt more protected in my life. I ended up here:

Maybe it's just me but can you really be upset at a place like that?

So even after that I'm chalking this up to another great day.

I'm also claiming the owl as my protector.

Well that Blew!

Actually today was a pretty great day, can’t complain really (well I can but I wont). We woke up, drove down to Woupon, and met up with Chip. This time he gave us a tour of the USDA building. I learned about propane cannons which are set on islands to randomly make loud noises and scare the birds away which is pretty cool. We met Mike who also works there and he told us that we may be able to get the guy who owns Jack Island to drop Crissa and I off so we could do observations when Katie and Brian are not here since we have no way of towing our boat without them. We picked up 8 dead frozen birds that were shot on Jack and Hat Islands with leg bands. The Mississippi crew is taking those birds back to take skin sample and other samples since their age is known. We then headed to Horicon,

A Cormorant at the USDA office!

When we got to Horicon to see Sadie and she goes, “It had oil!” How embarrassing!! We took it in thinking the company did the wrong thing, 5 people and nobody caught that the tank we were checking wasn’t the tank we needed to check. The tank we needed to check had a dipstick! Turns out the motors got clogged with algae, stuff like that happens sometimes. Blah!

So after talking for a while Sadie took us on a tour of Horicon’s swamp. It’ a big swamp too. We saw a lot of different birds, I think my favorite are still the American White Pelican. We saw a Black-necked Stilt, which isn’t even supposed to be here according to my book so that was pretty cool too. We also saw a black tern, purple martins, sandhill cranes, cliff swallows, and all sorts of other stuff.  When we got back we had to leave pretty quick because we still had frozen cormorants in the back of the car. We drove from Horticon and stopped to pick up the Zodiac which was done and attached it to the truck and hailed it back here… well almost.

So we’ve been driving for a while, I’m pretty well asleep and all the sudden *BANG* and Brian goes “Shit I blew a tire”. Yeah I know right, after yesterday we STILL have trouble. We blew the tire on the trailer in an area that didn’t have a shoulder so we limped to a gas station and checked it out, this is what we saw

Yeah… it was pretty bad. To top that off the tire iron we had was for the truck not the trailer so it didn’t fit! We had some tools in the boat which included a ratchet that had a 6 inch handle and some bits for it. The ratchet was acting up and 6 inches pretty much rules out having leverage. We couldn’t get the spare off the trailer until Crissa fixed the ratchet and Brian found a cheater handle. I took the old one off and Katie figured out where to put the jack. It took us an hour… but at the same time, it only took us an hour and we didn’t have to call AAA. Honestly, if something goes wrong a field team isn’t a bad group of people to have around. We finally made it back here thank goodness, we were pretty happy to be back. The Mississippi crew leaves tomorrow which will be sad, I liked having them around but they’ll be back soon.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring but honestly, I’m ready for it. BRING IT ON

Scratch that!

So today was interesting. We woke up at 2:30 and got on the lake around 3:30. I went on the “workskiff” to Spider Island, supposedly just with Crissa, Ken and Sadie were on the boat too but they were going to Hog to do nest destructions. The wind was pretty rough but we didn’t have much of a window of opportunity so we went out anyways. We wore something called a Mustang Suit which is like a full body life vest, I actually was glad I had it on because I was getting SOAKED as we splashed through violent waves on the way out to the island.

------PAUSE-------

So we’re on this boat heading out before the sun was up but you could see a little light over the water splashing through COLD waves and I am at peace. My thoughts are running around as I’m thinking how everybody should do this at least once and how lucky the birds are to live somewhere like this and how even though it was going to be a long day and how nice it must be to have Sadies job where this is the kind of stuff you do. I thought how much prettier the sunrise is then the sunset yet rarely are people awake to see it and then things got interesting.

----END PAUSE---

So we’re coming into the island and you can really see how the Cormorants are devastating the place, the island has like 2 upright snags and nothing else. We get closer and the birds get off their nests and thousands of them start flying around, the big black birds are like something out of Alfred Hithcocks movie! We get to this anchoring system Sadie is leaning over with a pole to grab a hold of it and the propeller hits the rocks. Not just knicks them either like full out grinding breaking tearing noises. I’m holding on like… what the heck is going on here we’ve just killed something but nobody is really panicing. Ken drops an anchor cuts the motor and goes “Shit” that’s the only sign I’ve got that something might be really wrong. He pulls the motor out of the water and looks at it, I couldn’t see it but I could tell it didn’t look good. We were in maybe 2 feet of water if Ken hadn’t been so fast to drop the anchor we would have been on the island which would have been REAL bad. The wind was still knocking us around in the boat and we realized even if we were to do the observations anyways they wouldn’t get good data because it’d be blowing our scopes around so we decided to stay in the boat and try to get out of the situation. Ken tries to put our spare “kicker motor” on the boat, gets it on goes to take the hose from the motor to the gas tank and we don’t have the right connector. The gas tank had been replaced and the hose hadn’t so the hose had the wrong adapter! Even if the kicker motor had worked it was to windy for it to really get us anywhere but away from the rocks. After about an hour of messing with it we finally realize we’re going to have to call the CoastGuard to come get us L. We were on the water till about 7 but at least we had the Cormorants to watch, except if you weren’t careful looking threw binos on a boat will make you real seasick. The call finally came in which I don’t know why but makes me laugh “Fish and Wildlife this is U.S CoastGuard 538 do you copy”.



Coastguard came to get us and after they got us off the rocks we had to swallow our pride as they towed us in and we docked ourselves using paddles and push sticks, it was wonderful. So now you are privileged to the best part, the other crew (Katie, Chris and Brian) didn’t make it to their island either, they took the Zodiac out and it has two motors one was over heating and the other wasn’t pushing the boat! They hardly even were able to leave the dock! So now we’re down two boats!

-insert- So it’s a day later and I guess I need to insert a little in here about the Zodiac so that the next entry makes sense. We get the Zodiac back to the campground and Brian crawls into it to see what is wrong with it. He opens the oil tank (mind you Crissa, Katie, Sadie and I were all standing right there so clearly this whole thing seemed legit) and sticks a pen in, no oil, so we go inside and get a foot long zip tie, he sticks that in still dry. So we’re like this boat has no oil, they winterized the boat, drained all the fluid and didn’t put it back in! So everybody is a little peeved about this and we’re trying to figure out what to do and Ken says we need to take it back to where it was winterized and get it re-done so we call the place and the Horicon group decided to take it back that night.

--------------

We take the Workskiff in to a local place and they replaced the broken prop and the hub (even though they don’t like Honda motors) and we thought we had it up and running we had this plan to go to Hog Island and to nest destructions but they put the boat in the water and … wait for it… it didn’t work, surprise!

So, no field work today sadly, but we did mess with the net gun some and I got to see the cormorants and one of the islands! Woot!

Who is who?

Today we tried to sort out the camper before the extra people arrived, it’s not an easy task, there is storage areas but some of it is rather inconvenient. The camper is a good size for 2 people but more then that is a bit tight. I also played with equiptment today, picked out the scope and tripod I want to use and figured out how to set up the blind. I’m a little worried because when we get to the islands all the cormorants leave and the gulls come in and eat their eggs and young. The longer we take to get set up the more chicks die, no pressure though!

-The other people arrived today, Katie and Brian work for the National Wildlife Research Center in Mississippi. They’re married and have their own camper (well, it’s the centers but they’re using it.) Brian has been working with Cormorants since 1997 and has most of his schooling in fisheries which makes sense since cormorants eat fish! Also interesting fact, he got his undergrad in business! I guess a degree’s a degree! Katie has been working on Cormorants since 2004 and is from the south somewhere, the way she talks is so funny. I’ll touch on that later.

Sadie works for Horticon and is pretty much everybodies boss when she’s here she’s from Wisconsin and has the typical accent I love to listen to her talk. She always seems to know what she’s talking about so that’s a plus. She is staying in our camper tonight.

Ken has been working here banding Cormorants for 25 years. He’s the one to talk to if you have questions. He also has a story for EVERYTHING and they’re all good. I think he thinks the world is out to get him though. He’s retired now and says he’s spending this season as our cook but I doubt he’s really retired I think he just isn’t getting paid anymore.

Chris has a background in forestry but actually worked with patients for dippers and pull-ups for a few years. Now that he’s retired he’s out helping with everything. He is super nice and always has a story, he has done aerial surveys all over the place and been in 3 plane accidents. Oh and Ken was in a plane accident too but I don’t know his story. Chris is the ultimate realist, I prefer to think everything is going to go right eventually.

They settled in and we all went out to eat and talked about the project we are doing tomorrow. We wake up at 2:30 out of here by 3 we go to the islands set up the blinds and stay there pretty much all day. We will be using a 5 gallon bucket as a toilet; Katie calls it the Honey Bucket… EW! And this is what we talked about over dinner too, did you know there is a book called How To Take a Crap in the Woods, and that’s actually what it’s about too! The observations will go 45 minutes of looking, 15 rest every hour, we also have a break from 12-2  which is nap time… but you can’t leave the blind. Pretty nervous but I know I can do this!

I touched the statues in the bottom of the lake

Drove around Fond Du Lac county, Random fact alert- Fond Du Lac means Bottom of the Lake in French!- we went and saw a bunch of statues in Woupon including “The Citadel” which was creepy, and “The end of the trail” which I really liked but I wish there was backstory with it since it was such a moving piece.

End of the Trail

Went to Horticon Wildlife refugee, I got to see an American White Pelican, Sandhill Cranes, and a Yellow Headed Black bird! We saw many other birds but those were the three new lifers.

We then went to the USDA office in Horticon and met Chip who is doing cormorant egg oiling and shooting on the managed islands (Hat and Jack). He showed me the leg bands we will be looking for in the future. The office he works in will also be the office were we will be doing necropsies on our dead birds. We went from his office to meet Sadie at the Horticon National Wildlife Refugee. I signed a volunteer wavier there and we picked up the boat we will be using this summer and we headed out to Ellison Bay. Also somewhere in there we ate lunch at the Audubon Inn which was decorated completely in birds and Audubon’s drawings!

We live in a camper, a tiny little towable camper, not actually that tiny but you get the picture, we have a tiny kitchen, small bathroom, set of bunkbeds, small master bedroom, table and a sofa. Honestly it’s almost better then Elkins considering we didn’t have a sofa there! I chose the top bed which is like a foot from the ceiling but I like it in my nook in the wall. We ate dinner at a cute little diner where we were waited on by the most adorable Ukrainian girl. We also drove around the area and saw the sights. Everything closes around 8 here, it’s hard to adjust to. They also don’t have Taco Bell or Wal-mart.

Home Sweet Home

The bunk bed