In my work email inbox was this:
Subject: vacation in Wisconsin?
We just signed a contract for *** — site visits next week
Great free beer
Four days after that email, I’m on a flight from Seattle to Milwaukee to spend three days looking at rock quarries. This was all just last week. Aside from free beer and looking at rock quarries, I was excited to see Wisconsin, a state I’d never visited before.
On the third day of “working,” we wrapped up early enough that I could slowly amble my way to Milwaukee to catch my evening flight back home to Seattle. I searched on Google Maps for some natural area to visit and came up with Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, a large area of green on the map that looked interesting. So, I hit “go” on the directions and began zig-zagging my way there along Wisconsin rural roads, past barns, silos, cornfields, and small towns. All roads in Wisconsin generally run north-south or east-west, thanks in part to our Public Land Survey System of townships, ranges, sections, quarter-sections, and quarter-quarter-sections. Wisconsin has few topographic constraints inhibiting this trend. It’s nice, gently rolling farm country.
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This link, Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, will give you more information. Horicon Marsh is 33,000 acres in size, one of the largest freshwater marshes in the United States. The marsh and surrounding area have the highest concentration of drumlins in the world. More on that later.
When I arrived, the visitor center was closed. I was looking forward to seeing some exhibits and chit-chatting with someone about what to see and do. I settled for a short trail that started nearby. The weather was nice, somewhere in the low 60s, warmer than usual for a November in Wisconsin. A consistent wind was blowing that stretched and softened the clouds.
The first thing I wanted to view was the unnamed pond where there was a boardwalk extending into it. I could see ducks on the pond, but as I approached, and I approached slowly, the ducks moved farther out into the pond. I sat on a bench at the end of the boardwalk for awhile hoping the ducks would get comfortable with my presence. The ducks kept their distance, sufficient enough that I couldn’t readily identify them even with binoculars except for a few Northern Shovelers. I travel with a compact pair of Nikon Trailblazer binoculars, 8x25, perfect for traveling light but the small objective lens makes it challenging to get a bead on and track birds, not to mention limitations in low light conditions.
There weren’t many birds because it was midday and the wind was blowing steadily. I entered a wooded area and spotted a Black-capped Chickadee. Merlin Sound picked up a Hairy Woodpecker and White-breasted Nuthatch. There were flocks of blackbirds moving through the open areas, mainly Rusty Blackbirds from what I could tell. A Red-tailed Hawk was soaring and circling on high. The following two photos are poor quality but document what I observed.
Looking west to the bigger part of the marshland, I saw large flocks of birds that looked mostly like Sandhill Cranes with some Canada Geese. They were far away, heading south. As I watched the large flocks, something above me caught my eye. It was four beautiful Sandhill Cranes.
There were other things to see here in the natural world, mushrooms and a little greenery.
Most of Wisconsin was covered in glacier during the last ice age, ironically called the Wisconsin Glaciation, that spanned from 75,000 to 11,000 years ago. The movement of the ice sheet and associated meltwaters imprinted the land surface and left many glacial features like kettles, eskers, and drumlins. You can see these features as you fly over, as I did. The Horicon Marsh area has the highest concentration of drumlins in the world.
Drumlins and drumlin swarms are glacial landforms composed primarily of glacial till. They form near the margin of glacial systems, and within zones of fast flow deep within ice sheets, and are commonly found with other major glacially-formed features (including tunnel valleys, eskers, scours, and exposed bedrock erosion).
Drumlins occur in various shapes and sizes, including symmetrical (about the long axis), spindle, parabolic forms, and transverse asymmetrical forms. Generally, they are elongated, oval-shaped hills, with a long axis parallel to the orientation of ice flow and with an up-ice (stoss) face that is generally steeper than the down-ice (lee) face.
Wikipedia
The quarries in the area were mining a dolomitic limestone of Silurian age (443.8 to 419.2 million years ago) for use as a decorative and architectural stone. It’s a beautiful cream-colored rock. The rock formation is part of the Niagara Escarpment, an erosional feature that stretches from Wisconsin to Niagara Falls.
That’s all I have. What’s going on in your natural worlds: in the sky, on the surface, or underground? Who has snow? Who doesn’t have snow? Who doesn’t want any snow? Who wants pie?
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