Wisconsin 2023 - Day 6

June 9, 2023 (Friday)

This was our last full day in Wisconsin, and we decided to spend it exploring Horicon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. We'd visited briefly on our trip north from Milwaukee, and again for a couple of hours last night, but this would be our day to really check it out. 

We started at first light on the auto tour loop.  It had been quite busy the evening before, but we had it to ourselves this morning. 

The first part of the tour loop passes through large fields and marshes, with scattered trees. Most of the birds were seen at a distance. We got good looks at a Willow Flycatcher that was actually sitting in some willows. 

Willow Flycatcher

We also had a flyover of one of the many White Pelicans using the marsh for the summer. It always seems odd to see pelicans far from any ocean or coastline, but White Pelicans spread out across the United States Midwest and up into Canada to breed on freshwater lakes and marshes. 

American White Pelican

We parked and spent a couple of hours on the Egret Trail and its floating boardwalk section. In addition to the many Black Terns that we'd seen the previous evening, we picked up a number of other species. 

Barn Swallow

Eastern Kingbird

Red-winged Blackbird

Back at the parking area this Yellow Warbler male was perched in the sun. 

Yellow Warbler

As we continued on the tour road, we came across this Common Snapping Turtle laying her eggs alongside the road. We come across this many times. The turtles like to come up from lakes, marshes, streams etc. to slightly higher ground to lay their eggs. That often seems to put them on roadway shoulders. 

Common Snapping Turtle laying eggs

After completing the auto tour loop, we drove over to the NWR Headquarters building.  We went inside briefly but it was a pretty simple set-up and the volunteer working the counter was involved in deep conversation with one of the staff, so we didn't hang around for long. 

We repeated the Discovery Trail that we'd walked several evenings ago, and saw pretty much the same birds. 

We continued driving around the large marshy area, only some of which is within the boundaries of the National Wildlife Refuge. Darned if we didn't come across an even larger Visitor Center, this one called The Horicon Marsh Education and Visitors Center, and run by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. 

We went inside the large visitor center, but they were having school field trips and it was kind of a madhouse. The staff was busy with kids so we looked around a bit on our own. There were some nice displays, including this display of owls and raptors found on the marsh.

The marsh has a long history of human habitation, with nomadic hunters arriving around 12,000 years ago. Fossil remains of Wooly Mammoths have been found in the area, and this huge metal sculpture of a Woolly Mammoth and nearby hunter was next to the parking lot. The mammoth is made up of thousands of short sections so steel rebar. 

It was sunny and getting warm, so we called it an afternoon and returned to our cottage to read and relax.

The next morning we had a relaxed drive back to Milwaukee, where we turned in the rental car and made our 10:30 flight to Chicago, and then our flight to San Antonio which arrived at about 5:00 p.m.  We returned to the airport hotel, recovered our car and drove on home. It was nice not to be getting back in at midnight and having to stay the extra night. 

Teri has picked up a couple of magnets along the way. Wisconsin definitely plays up their license plate logo "America's Dairyland".  

Overall we didn't find Wisconsin to be as interesting as Michigan in terms of natural areas or bird life, but the interesting factory tours made up for it. Overall, a nice place to spend a week.