I don’t have time to do much right now, but I just want to get it up here: NH passed same-sex marriage this afternoon.
Welcome to the club, but always remember that we did it first.
UPDATE: does this mean that the Free State Project has had its first success?
Given all the talk we hear from Douglas about protecting people from sex offenders, you’d think that this wouldn’t happen so easily:
Local officials have expressed concerns after learning that the Department of Corrections has not provided treatment for sex offenders living in local communities in Bennington and Rutland counties for several weeks because the contract to provide that service was broken.
Oh, and it gets better…
Several Bennington County officials said they were also concerned because they hadn’t been notified by the Department of Corrections that sex offenders living in their community were not getting clinical treatment.
Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage said her office, Cole, the Bennington County Special Victims Unit and other agencies had worked together to create a successful team that had attracted positive attention for its response to sex crimes. But she said part of the success had been the trust that all members of the team were doing their part.
“My office makes plea agreements all the time in cases that require sex offender treatment. The fact that we don’t have someone doing that right now would have been good to know,” she said.
So the DOC didn’t think it necessary to tell local officials.
I shall summarize:
Sex offenders who have treatment as part of the terms of their probation are not getting the treatment they need.
Why is this? We don’t know.
When did this start? We don’t know.
Not only do we not know, but…
Georgia Cumming, the department’s program director for sex offenders, said she didn’t know the exact date the previous contract was broken, but said it was earlier in May.
It’s easy to talk about protecting people and it’s easy to talk about sex offenders in the abstract, but this is real: this is people who are supposed to be receiving treatment who aren’t. We talk about budgets; we talk about costs. This is the cost of trying to dismantle government:
…Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito said… “That gap is being filled partially by the (Department of Corrections), but for treatment like this, you really need a licensed provider. Unfortunately, the state doesn’t have the luxury of being able to afford to have any back-up providers.”
So I think I’ve got this clear now: meaningless rhetoric about sex offenders is, to quote a Douglas press release, “an important and necessary step in strengthening its sex offender registry.”
But back up providers in case of a serious gap in coverage is a “luxury.”
Good to know where our priorities are.
Apparently, Douglas is kind of a coward when the legislature actually fights back. Per today’s Rutland Herald, via Daniel Barlow, he…
…allowed a major renewable energy bill to become law Wednesday without his signature after raising concerns earlier this year that it would lead to increased electrical costs for Vermonters.
Douglas… said… while he supports renewable energy and efficiency projects, he believes it will lead to residents and businesses paying too much for green and clean energy.
Still, he said he does not believe “the process will be well served by my veto…”
Full statement from Douglas is here (pdf file).
Maybe someone should have thought of standing in serious opposition to him sooner but I’m glad it finally seems to be happening.
UPDATE
And speaking of opposition, apparently (reported in Today’s Reformer, by Dave Gram for the AP), the opposition is kind of whiny:
Conspicuously absent from Wednesday’s session were Douglas’ top budget officers, Administration Secretary Neale Lunderville and Finance and Management Commissioner Jim Reardon. Reardon had a statement read into the record saying he feared the hearing was “designed to disparage the governor’s alternative budget approach.”
Wow.
Pretty quiet day here today, so I’m going to do a bird post. This is a piece I originally posted on Daily Kos Saturday as part of the “Dawn Chorus” series.
This is a photo of a magnolia warbler (there’s a larger version after the fold. Magnolia warblers are about 5″ tall, and has quite the range. Per Cornell:
Though it has very specific habitat preferences in the breeding season, the Magnolia Warbler occupies a very broad range of habitats in winter: from sea level to 1,500 meters elevation, and most landscape types, except cleared fields.
This diary is a summary of the warblers I’ve encountered in the last month. I know it says “this week” but that’s just ’cause I like the alliteration. I promise that the title is the only lie I will tell in this post.
All the warblers below were potographed in either Vermont, New Hampshire or Massachusetts, and none more than 100 miles from the borders of the other two.
All the photos below are clickable, leading you to larger versions with more detail about location. They were all taken with a Sigma 50-500mm lens, taken either with my Pentax K20d or the backup camera I used temporarily, a Pentax K10d, when I dropped (!) the K20d last week.
Warbler #1: American redstart (5″)
This photo is from Hinsdale, NH. There’s a particular stretch of land that has gotten me great looks at quite a few warblers, and last weekend was no exception:
Cornell’s facts about the Redstart include the following:
The male American Redstart occasionally is polygynous, having two mates at the same time. Unlike many other polygynous species of birds that have two females nesting in the same territory, the redstart holds two separate territories up to 500 m (1,640 ft) apart. The male starts to attract a second female after the first has completed her clutch and is incubating the eggs.
Draw your own conclusions.
Warbler #2: bay-breasted warbler (5.5″)
I’d never seen a Bay-Breasted warbler before this day, so it was a real treat to get this good a look at one. It reminds me why Parker River Wildlife Refuge is, by far, one of my favorite places to look for birds.
Here’s what Cornell tells us about the Bay-breasted warbler:
… the Bay-breasted Warbler benefits from spruce budworm outbreaks when the caterpillars provide abundant food. Spraying to control the destructive outbreaks may have reduced populations of this warbler.
Warbler #3: black-and-white warbler (5.25″)
These used to be birds I worked hard to find. Then one showed up in my yard, and now I just seem to find them everywhere. This one showed up near my office at work:
And this one was another great Parker River sighting:
I can vouch for this characterization from Cornell:
Unusually aggressive for a warbler, the Black-and-white Warbler sometimes attacks and fights Red-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadee, Tennessee Warbler, and other species.
I have, in fact, been dive bombed by these guys.
Warbler #4: black-throated green warbler (5″)
This was part of our Hinsdale walk:
Here’s what I want to know about this entry:
The male Black-throated Green Warbler sings persistently during the breeding season. One individual was observed singing 466 songs in one hour.
Who did the counting?
Warbler #5: blackburnian warbler (5″)
I want to say something about this: we showed up on Parker River last Saturday and didn’t know it was birdathon day. There were birders everywhere doing their little competitive birding thing (I don’t do the competitive stuff as a rule, but I get how it can be fun). I mentioned to someone that I had been looking to get a decent photo of a blackburnian (I had one from a few years ago) and he made a point of taking time out of his birdathon to help me find one.
I really like birders. Even when we’re in competition, we help one another out:
Warbler #6: blue-winged warbler (4.5-5″)
Even though it was close to home (we found this bird at Herrick’s Cove, a Vermont Important Bird Area I check out early in the morning on my way to work), this guy was work. We heard this and I thought it was a Northern Parula. Hoping to get a decent shot of it, we spent about 20 minutes looking for it, and quickly saw it hop up a few times, only to go down again, but those brief looks made it really clear that it was not a parula. It took 20 minutes of hanging out looking for it, and almost giving up, before we finally were getting ready to move on when it flew out into a tree and landed right above me. Viola. Instant life bird.
Warbler #7: chestnut-sided warbler (5″)
One morning at Herrick’s Cove, I saw a bunch of these guys just flitting about like crazy. One landed right by my head:
This shot was at Parker River:
Here’s something I did not know about these birds:
On the wintering grounds in Central America the Chestnut-sided Warbler joins in mixed-species foraging flocks with the resident antwrens and tropical warblers. An individual warbler will return to the same area in subsequent years, joining back up with the same foraging flock it associated with the year before.
Warbler #8: common yellowthroat (5″)
As their name implies, common yellowthroats are fairly common. They are, however, still pretty neat and can present some fun ID challenges. This first one is from Parker River:
These others are from Herrick’s Cove, on two different days. Notice the marking on these two birds. It would be very easy to mistake them for the much less common Nashville Warbler, which looks extremely similar, but can have a red mark on the tip of its head, and has distinctly black legs:
The Common Yellowthroat is apparently monogamous within a breeding season and only infrequently will males be seen with two mates in their territory. Females, however, show no fidelity to their mates and often attract other males with their calls. The true genetic mating system of this species remains to be worked out.
I’ll just leave that as is.
Warbler #9: magnolia warbler (5″)
These are both photos of the same bird, taken at Parker River. We first found it a bit distant, as in this view:
Then as I traced it, it kept getting closer:
Warbler #10: northern parula (4.5″)
Also at Parker River, another birder pointed this Northern Parula out to me. I’ve had photos of Parula’s before, but never this close or with this much detail:
Parulas tend to hang out high in the tree canopy, which is one reason I rarely get photographs of one. Seeing one this close, and nearly at eye level was great.
Warbler #11: northern waterthrush (6″)
This bird from Herrick’s Cove was a real treat. I’d been looking to get a photo of a Northern Waterthrush for a few years now, but I never managed to pull it off. The day before I got these photos, I heard two of them calling back and forth, but could only get a quick look at one, not quick enough to get a photo. I even tried playing its call to coax it out. No luck. The next morning I went back to the same spot to see if they were still around. Didn’t even need to try the call. One was singing from a nearby tree and eventually moved into perfect view.
Warbler #12: ovenbird (6″)
Now this ovenbird was not easy. It was hidden by leaves and just sort of singing down low, but I did manage to find it and photograph it, despite all expectation to the contrary.
The ovenbird is named, by the way, because its nest resembles a dutch oven.
Warbler #13: palm warbler (5.5″)
Palm Warblers are among the earliest new warblers, so I’m always looking for them (and Yellow Rumped) before anything else is even on my radar. These were both at Herrick’s Cove one morning:
I don’t know why it’s called the Palm warbler. It’s a northern bird.
Warbler #14: wilson’s warbler (4.75″)
This Wilson’s was a real treat. We spotted it and I just did my best to get photos of it. Most of them came out poorly but a few worked out well. This was at Parker River as well:
Warbler #15: yellow warbler (5″)
Yellow Warblers tend to get fairly ubiquitous. These were taken all over:
Allen Brothers Marsh in Westminster, VT:
The boat launch in Springfield, VT:
Parker River:
Herrick’s Cove:
When I listen for them, I have trouble sometimes. I didn’t realize why until I read this:
Recent DNA-based studies indicate that the Chestnut-sided Warbler is the closest relative of the Yellow Warbler. Both sing similarly phrased songs, and Yellow Warblers regularly sing songs nearly identical to those of the Chestnut-sided Warbler.
Warbler #16: yellow-rumped warbler (5.5″)
Finally, another of the most prevalent warblers, the yellow-rumped warblers are among the first to arrive in the Spring and the last to leave. I haven’t done great with photos of them this year, but this shot from Herrick’s Cove does the trick:
Something else I didn’t know is that one reason they are so prevalent is because of their eating habits:
Yellow-rumped Warblers are perhaps the most versatile foragers of all warblers. They’re the warbler you’re most likely to see fluttering out from a tree to catch a flying insect, and they’re also quick to switch over to eating berries in fall. Other places Yellow-rumped Warblers have been spotted foraging include picking at insects on washed-up seaweed at the beach, skimming insects from the surface of rivers and the ocean, picking them out of spiderwebs, and grabbing them off piles of manure.
A few other warbler tips. For telling them apart (in the Spring– in the Fall it’s murder) I tend to group them into “yellow”, “colorful,” “stripey,” “black throated” and “misc.” This tends to be based on their head color, but isn’t exclusively.
Yellow ones include yellow, palm, wilson’s, common yellowthroat, nashville & blue winged.
I use yellow warbler as the “base” for this group and distinguish the others based on how they differ from it. Palm is like yellow but with red cap. Wilson’s has a black cap. Nashville has a white eye ring and some grey on its head. Blue-winged has blue wings. Common yellowthroat has a black mask for males and, for females, looks like a pink-legged nashville.
The colorful ones include parula, chestnut-sided, redstart and yellow-rumped
I don’t have a base for those– but once I realize it’s a very colorful bird it’s not that hard to separate them out.
The stripey ones include the ovenbird, the waterthrushes, the magnolia and the black and white. Mangolia is the only yellow one with stripes in our region. The ovenbird has a bright orange streak on the head. The waterthrushes are harder to tell apart but Louisiana tends to be much less colorful than northern. I’ve never seen a Louisiana, so when I start seeing one, I’ll figure out more 🙂
The black throated warblers are sort of their own category (black throated green, which isn’t really green, and black-throated blue, which is very dark blue, and black-throated gray, which I’ve never seen), but if you see a warbler with a black throat, it’s easy to tell which is which.
The others I usually just sort out on their own.
I never really thought I’d be into warblers this much, but it’s kind of like the way I’m into puzzles: there’s something really fun and immediate about seeing such a small bird and figuring out what it is. Figuring out how to photograph it is even more interesting because it can be extremely challenging, but sometimes I do okay.
Finally, a couple administrative items:
Okay, that’s it for this week’s Dawn Chorus. I hope you enjoyed all the warbler photos and factoids. As usual with all my birding posts, feel free to treat this as an open birds and birding thread, and see everyone in the comments.
Per the AP, via today’s Rutland Herald:
Retired Marine Gen. James Jones, the White House’s national security adviser, said this month he wasn’t sure the policy would be overturned.
“We have a lot on our plate right now,” he said.
There is concern that reopening the socially and politically divisive question of gays and lesbians in the ranks could place an additional burden on a military stretching to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So here’s my question:
How, exactly, does not pulling units apart, not forcing soldiers to lie and not forcing them conceal aspects of their lives from their colleagues place an additional burden on anyone?
Let’s turn this around:
How much of a burden is it for us to fire soldiers who have served with honor, who are fluent in Arabic, who have cost us millions of dollars in training?
“We have a lot on our plate right now?”
So why are we wasting our time getting rid of people whose only crime are the words “I am gay?”
And how much of a problem do we think this will be when 58% of the population supports repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell??
Unlike some people, I’m not in a serious rush over this. I’m fine with getting an act of Congress to repeal it, and as long as this happens in this congressional session, that’s great. But this concern troll idiocy is simply ludicrous.
There’s no serious political force opposing this repeal and honestly, this is the only argument they’ve got left:
From Louis Porter, in today’s Rutland Herald:
Douglas administration officials said their proposal is a necessary brake on education spending that has not taken the same kind of reductions as state government and human services over the last year.
The governor’s proposal would move additional costs into the Education Fund – including teachers’ retirement costs and early education costs – and place a firm cap on education spending for the fiscal year that follows this one.
“Given the investment in education that taxpayers have made in Vermont and the current woes that taxpayers are having in the economy that level funding education spending for one year is reasonable,” Tax Commissioner Tom Pelham said. “Especially when many programs funded by the General Fund are seeing not level funding but cuts in their budgets.”
This isn’t a budget proposal. It’s an attempt to damage public education by setting more of the burden on property taxes and create conflict between schools and residents at the local level.
First off, spending freezes are not freezes. They’re cuts. School programs get a little more expensive each year, so a budget freeze basically means a budget cut.
This means that programs seen as non-essential, even though they have a great deal of overall educational benefit (such as art and music classes), get cut while programs that have a more dubious educational benefit (such as sports programs) tend to stick around.
Don’t get me wrong: I am in favor of sports programs. I think they’re great. I just don’t think they have the educational benefit that art and music do and I sometimes question whether pairing them so closely with public school programs is such a good idea.
That said, there’s a term which conservatives like to throw around: “school choice.” Here’s an example of Douglas referencing it:
Not every child receives an equal opportunity for the best education VT’s public schools can provide. When a school fails to meet the individual needs of a student, wealthy families can pay tuition and choose another school, but poor and middle-class children are left behind. That is wrong. Choice should not be a privilege reserved for only the wealthy. It should be the right of all Vermonters. I will open the doors of our best public schools to every child.
Here’s what Douglas’ proposal above does: it gives parents with the resources to move their kids to another school the option to do so, forcing those without those resources to keep their kids local, but does nothing to actually benefit the school that’s in trouble. It therefore, keeps poor kids poorly educated, and leaves wealthier kids with more options.
Let’s get back to the Herald piece. There’s a telling line towards the end:
And the expansion of income sensitivity and other measures have somewhat masked the cost of schools, Douglas said.
“Vermonters need to know what the true cost of our education system is,” he said.
And he’s right. We should know the “true cost” of all the choices we make with our budgets. So here’s my thought for the day: the “true cost” of not fully funding our educational system?
It’s really expensive.
Per Think Progress:
Last month, Phillip Zelikow disclosed that while serving as a top-aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005, he had written and circulated a memo expressing grave concerns about the Bush administration’s torture regime. Another memo Zelikow co-authored at around the same time even offered a legal alternative to the program. Now, it turns out that strong opposition to President Bush’s interrogation policies came from within his tight-knit inner circle. Karen Hughes, counselor to the president, told the Houston Chronicle this week that she was “very vocal in the internal debate”
You know what?
That’s it. I’ve had it with this crap
If you were part of this administration and you knew that torture was going on, and kept silent about it while we were committing crimes of war, you probably had your reasons for not going public. I’m not going to judge that.
No. Scratch that. I’ll judge that.
You were wrong.
You had no business allowing this administration to engage in criminal acts and no business just relying on saying things internally and going through appropriate channels.
But that’s not the point of this piece.
If that’s what you chose to do, you have to live with that, and one of the rules of living with that is that you do not, at this point in time, get to go back and say that you opposed it at the time.
You do not get to attempt to whitewash your public image.
You do not get to pretend you were not party to this.
You do not get to be absolved of your complicity through the description of how you registered your protests at the time.
You do not get to play the good guy by having waited until that administration was out of office to say “oh, by the way, I didn’t like it when it was going on.”
You were part of this.
You stood by this administration when it was committing criminal acts.
There is a word for that.
The word is accomplice.
Warblers are small, insect-eating birds, that are often difficult to identify and a lot of fun to watch. I’ve managed to “successfully” (in that I have a photo which will definitively ID the bird, not that I necessarily have a good photo) photographed twenty different types of warblers, all in New England.
The blackburnian warbler on the left is one example of the not particularly successful photographs. It’s one of the few times I’ve ever seen a blackburnian, and it was when I had a less powerful camera and lens combination (400mm lens, 6.1mp camera at the time; now I have a 500mm w/a 14.2mp camera).
After the fold, you’ll see a few more photos that are of the poor quality of this one, but most of them are some of my better work, and a few of them are among the best photos I’ve ever taken, such as this blue-gray gnatchatcher:
The blue-gray gnatchatcher (which is not a warbler) is 4.5″ long, and in this photo has nesting material in its mouth.
My base of operation is in Vermont, but these photos spread throughout the surrounding states (though none are more than a few hours away from Southeastern Vermont).
One of the reasons I love trying to photograph warblers is because they present a real challenge while not being impossible, and when you’re lucky, you can get incredibly close to them.
One quick note: all these photos are clickable, leading to larger versions of the photos with details (camera type, location of photo, etc.).
I don’t have time to write up collections of photos that often, so if you want to get regular updates, you can subscribe to my photo alerts, which is announcement only and posts either a daily or weekly (your choice) digest of all my recent additions.
I hope you enjoy the warblers!
Yellow-rumped warblers are among the first to return each Spring and the last to leave:
The yellow rumps are fairly ubiquitous here in Spring, but can stick around well into October.
Black-throated green warblers are really neat to watch. They’re not common birds for me, but I usually get to see a few every year:
I’ve only ever managed to get one photo of a wilson’s warbler, though I’ve seen them a few times. Hopefully this year will yield better results:
This Northern Parula was a lot of work, but well worth it:
This magnolia warbler was a great find, and not far from home:
This blackpoll was very tricky to identify (fall warblers throw a lot of people off):
Again with the confusing fall warblers: this one’s a pine warbler, though I wouldn’t know it from the guidebooks alone:
Yellow warblers are just incredibly cute. These were all taken within a half hour’s ride from home.
American redstarts are extremely difficult to photograph, but I think I did okay here. This one was in my yard:
Black and white warblers nest in my yard, but I rarely get good photos of them at home. These are from some of my better birding areas:
Those last two have a funny story behind them– they’re of the same bird. I was in a wooded area, trying to find a black-throated blue (see next photo), and I have the bird’s call on my cell phone. I played it to try to see if one would respond. No Black-throated blue responded, but suddenly this big noise was right above me, chitting away. It took me some time to realize that it was this black-and-white warbler that apparently didn’t like me being there. Not only did it chide me the whole time I was photographing it, it followed me for about 20′, continually chiding me the whole time.
The black-thraoted blue warbler is one I spent a lot of time trying to get good photos of before I found this one:
I rarely find prairie warblers, but when I do, I always try to get a good photo:
All my experiences with prarie warblers are in Maine, though I know one was spotted in VT last week.
Common yellowthroats are, well, common, but they’re still a lot of fun to photograph:
I’ve never seen a Nashville warbler close to home; my only sightings of them are further north (Maine & Northern VT & NH). This is one of the better Nashville photos I’ve gotten:
This is probably one of the best palm warbler photos I’ve ever taken:
This blue-winged warbler is the latest addition to my warbler collection. It was a lot of work to track down, but worth it. We first heard it and tried to find it, but it kept diving into bushes and I kept just not getting the photo. After about 20 minutes, it just flew overhead and landed in a nearby tree, and I finally got the shot I wanted of it:
This chestnut-sided warbler was also really tricky to find, but vigilance paid off. These are extremely small and fast-moving birds, but sometimes they will stay still for a moment or two:
This is the one and only time I’ve ever photographed a canada warbler. Eventually I will do better:
Ovenbirds are not uncommon, but I’ve only ever managed to get this one photo of one:
I still don’t have photos of waterthrushes (Louisiana or Northern) and the mourning warbler constantly eludes me, but I live in hope.
I write this with the clear understanding that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I will therefore keep this fairly simple:
I read today about how the unemployment fund may run dry next year.
While I read this, I know that there is stimulus money available for unemployment support, especially for those whose hours have been cut (one friend of mine just got laid off & two others just had their hours reduced, so this is fairly fresh information for me at the moment).
So… when we talk about the unemployment fund, and its status in terms of how much money is in it, is stimulus money even entering the discussion?
I don’t have any insight here, but I have questions, and I know this is a good place to ask this sort of question.
The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet is less than four and a half inches long.
I rock.
Okay, quite a few new birds in the past week: more warblers, new sparrows and, as lineatus and I both posted this week (hers and mine), Osprey.
After the fold, lots of photos of birds big and small, all of which are clickable to larger versions.
Hermit Thrush
Northern Mockingbird
Dark-eyed junco
Black-Capped Chickadee
Great Blue Heron
Green Heron (first I’ve seen this year)
Wood Ducks
Bar-headed Goose
Bar-Headed Goose
Tree Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-Throated Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Turkey Vultures
Bald Eagle
Purple Finch
Killdeer
Common Grackle
Pine Siskin
Blue-Headed Vireo
Rose-breasted grosbeak
Palm Warbler
Black-and-White warbler
Yellow-rumped warbler
Osprey
Mystery bird
Northern Flickers in mating displays
Downy Woodpecker
As usual, feel free to treat this as an open birding/bird photography thread.
