The past week in snapshots, starting with Thursday, June 24th, when I went to the farm, and stopped at a hot dog stand in Reedsburg on the way back.

Then I kayaked the Baraboo River--and explored some tributaries.


On Friday, June 25th I drove up to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge where I looked for cranes four times a day--sunrise, 11 am, 4 pm and sunset--on Saturday and Sunday.

Sometimes I found them (look in the corner of the slice of water).

On Monday, June 28th I was back at ICF, and had to check on the chicks at night. This is Nacho, our oldest.

And Feta, one of our youngest.

And today I went to Devil's Lake.

Oh, and we caught a baby ground squirrel in the driveway.

Today I wanted to go kayaking, but the sky kept threatening rain (and it did, occasionally, rain) so my desires went unfulfilled (but tomorrow! tomorrow will be glorious). So I road my bike less than a mile to investigate a mysterious park-like location (it turned out to be a rode for Yellowthunder, a chief of the Ho-Chunk Tribe who lived from 1774-1874), loafed around with a book, and watched "180° South" on Netflix. I enjoyed the movie more than I expected to, so I recommend it to you--not as something great, but as a pretty good movie that combines an environmental message with a watchable adventure story. I agree with the message, and I think it's presented in a more evenhanded, approachable manner than "An Inconvenient Truth." Added bonus: see "180° South" in conjunction with "The Motorcycle Diaries," and you practically took a trip to Chile right there. It also has a pleasant (pleasant is really the only word to describe it) soundtrack with an unexpected cover of a Greg Brown song by Jack Johnson.

Also, my blog layout woes have been fixed, and I made myself a new background and header to boot. I'm not sure how I feel about the background, so that may disappear shortly, but the header is staying for sure.

p.s. I accidentally changed the template of this blog and can't seem to get it back to the original--which is unfortunate. This will do for a little while, but I don't like it as well--so I'll be working on something else.

I didn't take this picture--my boss did. But this is Gouda, our 3rd chick (out of, as of now, ten--it's getting hectic), on June 4th. And this is a pretty good idea of what a chick run looks like when the chick is young: marbles in the water, brood model (that's a stuffed swan with a plastic whooper head attached), thermometer, food, green mats, heat lamps. The life of an isolation-reared whooping crane--not much like the marsh. (The marbles are to make the water shiny, and to help the chick get out if it falls in.)

I think I'm going to give Wednesday poemday a rest. But I'll try to post something on Wednesdays. Like these pictures.

June 6, 2008

July 15, 2009

May 26, 2010

For a wordier walk down memory lane (from me, but including some memories not my own), I'll direct you here.