Horicon Marsh – Geese Gone Wild
November 1, 2007
Article in: Birding
When most people think of Horicon Marsh, they think of geese. Canada Geese (along with Snow, Cackling and others) use Horicon’s massive marshland and surrounding farm fields as a stopover during migration. Thousands of these honking beauties can be seen and the sight of long strings and “V’s” of geese is truly amazing.
No, that’s not dirt on your screen but hundreds of Canada Geese
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Enjoy Horicon Marsh
September 11, 2007
Article in: Birding
The Birdfreak Team loves Horicon Marsh. This bird haven found in central Wisconsin northeast of Madison, is a great place to find a wide assortment of marsh birds. Roger Tory Peterson named Horicon one of his top twelve places to bird.
There are several great Websites that promote Horicon Marsh.
Enjoy Horicon Marsh is a site that focuses on many events going on around Horicon Marsh and of course includes the wonderful birding opportunities.
We are excited because our photos are featured on their homepage!!
Another wonderful site is one we just recently discovered, Horicon Marsh International Educational Center. This site focuses on promoting Horicon Marsh’s new educational center and the wonderful programs the Friends of Horicon Marsh are working on.
The Horicon Marsh Bird Club has checklists and information about their birding trips and events, including birding festivals. We’ve attended festivals at Horicon and have always had great times.
July is also a great time to bird at Horicon Marsh as young birds are mixing with migrants and the weather is usually wonderful!
If you haven’t visited Horicon, we suggest you do sometime. The birding is great any time of the year!
Horicon’s Hellish Highway
July 20, 2007
Article in: Birding
As borderland birders – living along the Illinois-Wisconsin border – we are rewarded with great birdspots in both of these beautiful Midwestern states. We also try to monitor any news and sightings from our northerly friends. One topic that has been up for debate (again) is what to do about Horicon Marsh’s dreadful Highway 49.
There is a wonderful post about Highway 49 at Mike’s Birding & Digiscoping Blog that illustrates the problem at Horicon Marsh. Highway 49 is a heavily traveled road with a speed limit of 55 mph that cuts right through Horicon Marsh, a National Wildlife Refuge!! That fact alone is scary for wildlife but perhaps even scarier is birding along this highway.
Imagine scanning mudflats and pools of water for Dowitchers, Rails, and Egrets with eighteen-wheelers barreling by you at 65 mph – literally feet from your scope. See pictorial example below:
Now imagine you’re a Virginia Rail or Least Bittern trying in desperation to cross this concrete river – with your young. Several thousand individuals of 91 species of animals have been documented as roadkill. There are probably hundreds more that were missed. The most sickening of these totals are the 54 Least Bitterns!!
Under federal law it is illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture or kill migratory birds. Running them over with a vehicle, intentional or not, would be a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
The problem is simple: lots of heavy traffic going too fast along a road frequented by birders who are stopped along both sides of the highway. The shoulders are wide and designed for stoppage.
The solution is not so simple. Non-birders might say that the road should be banned from birders stopping along it. However, this is ludicrous considering that A) this is a National Wildlife Refuge and B) Horicon Marsh draws in TONS of birders and tourists which means lots of money and attention for the birds.
So what should be done? There have been ideas brought up but for us there is really only one thing that can be done. This stretch of highway should be closed to through traffic and converted into part of the refuge road. This would mean no trucks and a speed limit of 30 mph or less.
Some people might find this crazy and too big of an inconvenience but the stretch of road isn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere. A simple new route on county roads would cost drivers a mere 11 or so miles. So ask yourself this – is a small detour worth the safety of our birds, not to mention birders?
We are running out of great places so why should we allow the ones we have be tarnished? In the upcoming weeks we will be contacting various entities to let them know what we think. We would love to hear other opinions on this topic, even if you’ve never birded Horicon before. Roger Tory Peterson considered it one of the top 12 birding hotspots in the U.S. Let’s keep it that way.
Horicon Marsh in July: Part Two-Little Birds
July 17, 2007
Article in: Birding
One of the main reasons we decided to visit Horicon Marsh in July (other than the fact that it is always great birding) was to find shorebirds. Our list wasn’t very big, but Veery got a lifer, the Short-billed Dowitcher. We also saw Solitary, Semi-palmated and Spotted Sandpipers, Lessor Yellowlegs, and lots of Killdeer.
Lessor Yellowlegs (above) and a pissed off Killdeer (below)
There were plenty of Black Terns flying all over the marsh and only a couple of Forster’s Terns. Our trip in May gave us the opposite. We also spotted young Common Moorhens, American Coots, and Blue-winged Teals.
Black Terns (above) and Common Moorhen Juveniles (below)
We saw a lot of young birds out of the nest, being fed by parents. Black Terns, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, and an Eastern Wood-Pewee were busily gathering food for hungry young.
Eastern Wood-Pewee young (above) and an adult Yellow-headed Blackbird (below)
A wonderful day at Horicon Marsh, a lucky Friday the 13th of birding!
Horicon Marsh in July: Part One-Big Birds
July 16, 2007
Article in: Birding
Great Egrets at Horicon Marsh
The Birdfreak Team set out to explore Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin, to see what late July had to offer. We last visited Horicon Marsh on Mother’s Day and were excited to see how much had changed over two months.
There was much more plant growth and we found many prairie and wetland flowers in full bloom, such as this Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium).
We noticed that there were many more Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons this time around, as well as Black-crowned Night-Herons and Green Herons.
Earlier in the week, a Little Blue Heron was discovered, a rare find for Horicon Marsh. A local birder we ran into told us that the Little Blue was seen earlier that morning, but unfortunately, we missed him.
Three of the four Black-crowned Night-Herons we saw along Highway 49
There were many Sandhill Cranes flying around and calling. We spotted a lovely couple on Dike Road, one of the dirt roads that take you into a part of the marsh. Here we also spotted a pair of Northern Harriers and plenty of Double-crested Cormorants.
Sandhill Cranes (above) and Double-crested Cormorant (below)
We also saw quite a few American White Pelicans, and a few Canada Goose. Stay tuned for the “Little Birds” of our Horicon Marsh trip.
American White Pelicans (above) and Great Egrets (below)
Horicon Marsh – Lots of Pelicans and a “ooomm-ka-chooom”
May 13, 2007
Article in: Birding
To complete our weekend at Horicon we began with an early morning to hear the wonderful sounds of the marsh. We were rewarded with an American Bittern “ooomm-ka-choooming”, a Virginia Rail and Soras. As it got lighter out we saw a Short-eared Owl and a ton of American White Pelicans. There were several hundred and some flew over the dike road (glad to have a moon roof!).
We continued down the road and found a really tall Canada Goose; well, actually a Sandhill Crane that thought he was a goose.
Blurry through the windshield
Suddenly the trio of birds took off and continued across the marsh, just like one big happy family.
Another great bird of Horicon Marsh is the Northern Harrier. We were lucky enough to find a pair that was on a nest and actively hunting. The male crossed the road right in front of our car. The bins won out over the camera.
Forster’s Terns were hovering above the road and plunging into the water.
We ended the trip with approximately 85 species and that great tired feeling of a fun birding trip.
Read about day one at Horicon Marsh.
Horicon Marsh and International Migratory Bird Day
May 12, 2007
Article in: Birding
What a way to spend International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) – a trip to Horicon Marsh! Horicon Marsh is 2/3 National Wildlife Refuge and 1/3 owned by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. At over 21,000 acres, Horicon is a birder’s paradise and also a difficult place to cover in a day or even a weekend.
Horicon Marsh
We casually birded a large portion of Horicon Marsh and netted 72 species of birds. About an hour into our trip my camera’s battery went “bwaant-bwaaaa!” (actual sound not made) and the battery was dead. Doh! Luckily we had a backup camera but Dakota (Veery’s son and Birdfreak’s nephew) took over photo duties.
Dakota, a young member of the Birdfreak Team
Tree Swallow
What’s great about Horicon Marsh is that many of the birds are easy to find and offer long, detailed fews. Hardly any bird is a glimpse or partial view. We had lengthy views of two great warblers – Cape May and Blackpoll.
Blackpoll Warbler
Bud Cook Nature Trail – home to TONS of Bobolinks and Sedge Wrens. We also saw Northern Harriers, Baltimore and Orchard Orioles, and Sandhill Cranes.
Bobolink – trying to blend in with the dandelions
American Coot
Yellow-headed Blackbird – seriously, one of the coolest bird sounds
Forster’s Tern – abundant along with Black Terns
There was only one minor glitch in our birding. First a little background about Dakota. At 9 years old Dakota is a fine birder. He is relatively well-behaved and superb at spotting birds (and usually at identifying them). What’s great about him is his drive to find birds and now to photograph them too. His been bird-banding several times, including the Lazuli Bunting sighting, and has always been polite and liked by the banders.
So the problem was this: while we were walking up from our trail after seeing Cape May Warblers a snobby lady sternly told Dakota to “Not touch the nets!”, referring to the mist-nets they had set up for a bird-banding session. This was unwarranted as Dakota was NOT touching the nets nor did he have any intention to touch them. There was no bird and nary a bug and no reason for him to “touch the nets”. It is this sort of nagging, annoying person that discourages youthful birders from this hobby/sport and from wanting to conserve bird habitat.
We walked away from the bird banding disgusted but excited to know that we were on our way to see Bobolinks, Blackbirds, and Blackpolls while that lady was destined to continue her patrol for any children that wander within a foot of their precious nets.
Horicon Marsh – the Dark Side
December 7, 2006
Article in: Birding
I discovered the joys of Horicon Marsh just four or five years ago and have been back nearly a dozen times in those years. Horicon Marsh is located northeast of Madison in south-central Wisconsin. The marsh is part state refuge and also part of the National Wildlife Refuge system.
The problem is that the marsh attracts tons of birds including many many Canda Geese. This would be great if there was a buffer around the marsh but the northern part butts right up to a busy highway. The birds that stop by to rest and feed on their way to places further south and also the resident birds have to face this deadly highway. And sadly, many birds become statistics on the wildlife killed list. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an excellent article about what they are trying to do to help this problem.
According to the article over 4,000 animals have been killed along Highway 49 in the last four years. I guess that doesn’t seem like a lot when you consider how many thousands of birds pass through the area. But remember, each of these roadkilled animals did not need to die that way. There are things that can be done (as the article states) but I think one of the easiest partial solutions would be to decrease the speed limit on that stretch of road to 35 mph. Not only is it scary to be birding on the side of a road (at least they have wide shoulders) when an 18-wheeler goes by at 50 or 60 mph but it is downright dangerous when you have thirty or more cars lining the shoulders and there’s heavy traffic on both sides.
I would hate to hear about a birder (or anyone) getting killed just because people can’t slow down. That said, I think everyone should make a trip to Horicon. In a way it is the Cape May, Southeast Arizona or Rio Grande Valley of the Midwest. I’ve picked up tons of lifers at the Marsh and completed my “wren list” (all U.S. Wrens) with Marsh and Sedge.
Great Egret
Sandhill Cranes (taller than our car)
Northern Harrier hovering above the marsh
Marsh Wren, peaking out of his nest. I didn’t realize all Wrens love to scold!
