Coming up for air

Happy first day of spring, everyone. Today is a day of getting things back in order for me. I’ve just been through a particularly busy time, hence thinner than normal postings here. No recent cheese making experiments, either. Between February 17 and this past Monday, I’ve made nine presentations. They have ranged from talks to local community groups, to lectures at one conference and one symposium (multiple talks both times) to talks to the professional conservation community (US Fish and Wildlife, and Department of Natural Resources). I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining here. This is my job, it’s what I’m supposed to be doing, and I do love it. But at the moment, I’m pooped! Fortunatly, things are easing up a bit, at least for a while.




















Migrating sandhill cranes

Meanwhile, spring is finally making a few inroads here in the (until recently) frozen Midwest. Rodger recently posted a beautiful picture of a sandhill crane on his blog. This got me thinking that we should begin seeing sandhills migrating through. And we have. In the last couple of weeks, tens of throusands of them have been flying overhead. This picture here is what we see of most of them. The vast majority head north to Wisconsin where they will take up residence at places like Horicon Marsh. We mostly hear them as they fly over. A friend once described them as sounding like a Canada Goose trying to warble. It’s beautiful, wild, and haunting.

So my crocus bloom, the days slowly lengthen and warm up. I’m waiting eagerly to see more species of flowers come into bloom, and looking forwaward to getting on with butterflies and other fieldwork. I’m looking forward to doing a bit more blogging, and cheesemaking, too.