Blue Goose ~ Day 6

June 6, 2014 ~ Fond du Lac, Wisconsin to Beaver Dam, Wisconsin

I woke up a little after 5 a.m. and again found a Starbucks about 0.2 miles away thanks to my iPhone. I got cleaned up just enough to feel un-gross and headed for Horicon. 

And it turned out to be a memorable two hours. The sky was overcast but I wore layers and wasn’t cold; also there was no wind. I got to the place on the auto tour where there is a floating boardwalk going out into the marsh. While there is a road around the perimeter of the entire marsh and at least one road bisecting the marsh and separating the northern two-thirds which is the NWR from the southern one-third which is managed by the Wisconsin DNR, and also a few lesser routes that allow one to get closer to the boundaries of the actual refuge, most of this large area is not accessible, which is, of course, what makes it a sanctuary for wildlife. There is hunting and fishing during certain seasons but no camping, boating or kayaking. 

I was the only person for most of the 2+ hours I was on the boardwalk. I spent one hour waiting for a marsh wren to show. It sang almost incessantly; it popped up from the cattails once for three seconds. But there were terns and swallows that perched on posts so close I could almost touch them. Terns are wonderful to watch as they swoop and circle in the sky, stop suddenly to hover and then dive straight down and into the water to feed. Somehow they see what they want from the sky, which is amazing. The Black terns are light grey and black; the Forster’s are white with black heads, orange bills with black tips and orange feet, all easily seen, first with the scope the night before and then this morning when I got so close I could see the field marks without magnification technology. Which doesn't happen often with birds. And as I was enchanted by terns so near, a male Yellow-headed blackbird came walking rapidly toward me, also getting very close. The female Yellow-headed blackbirds were busy searching for nesting material and also not overly concerned about me. A Green Heron flushed; White Pelicans flew east in small groups; a few Great Egrets were always present; Common Yellowthroats sang constantly. Slowly, the clouds dissipated, and by the time I left, it was warm and sunny again. My pathetic Nikon Coolpix camera (of course) was “battery exhausted” five minutes after I arrived at the marsh this morning. This is the worst camera I’ve ever had, but Deborah tells me I may not complain about it since the problems were there obvious from the get-go and I didn't bring it back. Now I’m stuck with it for a year. 

I went to the headquarters where a class of high-school kids were totally landscaping the front lawn, supervised by a few adults. It was the typical teenage scene with some hard workers in upright position, using shovels and working hard, and some kids lackadaisically poking a gardening utensil in the dirt as they sat on the ground;  a boy with a water hose and shrieking girls; kids constantly looking at their watches; a lot of bustle and activity and water bottles. It was a science class project and will be lovely with all the trees, perennials and grasses they were planting in the rich, well-prpared soil. The smell of manure was powerful. 

Since I had been up so early, I took a nap in my van with the windows open and fell into a deep sleep for 45 minutes before continuing. I drove the dike road that cut across the marsh,but which then dead-ended at the west end with no outlet, so I saw a lot of cattails, coming and going. 

Horicon (meaning clean pure water) is a little town at the southern end of the marsh that I drove through before arriving in Beaver Dam late afternoon, where I stayed in a Super 8, managed by a pleasant East Indian gentleman. He took pride in his motel and it showed in small ways. 

I worked about 4 hours, took a long hot shower and walked to an Italian restaurant which looked classy from the outside but which had pretty awful food. I had a pasta dish with a heavy, thick, bland tomato sauce, barely seasoned, topped with baked-on Mozzarella cheese and large whole sausage link and one large meatball. (Actually, the meat was tasty as would be expected here in the upper Midwest.)  And regrettably, I ordered cannoli for dessert and crunched through about a third of it, also thick and heavy. Back at the motel, I worked another couple of hours before sleeping in a bed. I also charged my stuff: camera batteries, toothbrush and personal computer. 

WIKIPEDIA

Later the region was inhabited by the Potawotomi, primarily to the east of the marsh, and the Ho-Chunk to the west. Seven well-traveled Native American foot trails met at the southern end of the marsh at the present location of Horicon. When Europeans first arrived in the area, they named the marsh "The Great Marsh of the Winnebagos". The first permanent modern settlement along the marsh was the town of Horicon. In 1846, a dam was built to power the town's first sawmill. The dam held the water in the marsh, causing the water level to rise by nine feet. The "marsh" was called Lake Horicon, and was, at the time, called the largest man-made lake in the world.^{[citation needed]}

In 1869, the dam was torn down by order of the State Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of landowners whose land had been flooded.^[3] The area became a marsh once more. In 1883, two sportsmen's clubs reported huge flocks of geese in the marsh, and stated that 500,000 ducks hatched annually, and 30,000 muskrats and mink were trapped in the southern half of the marsh.^[4]Both birds and hunters flocked to the area, and the local duck population was devastated. From 1910 to 1914, an attempt was made to drain the marsh and convert it into farmland; these attempts failed, and afterwards the land was widely considered to be useless.^[5]

During the 1940s, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service bought the northern portions of the marsh.^[6]Presently, the marsh is 32,000 acres (130 km²) in area, most of it open water and cattail marsh. The northern two-thirds, was originally created as a nesting area for the redhead duck...

Horicon Marsh was designated a Ramsar site on December 4, 1990.^[8]