H/T Meteor Blades via Daily Kos, for this one.

If you visit this link you’ll see links to various towns across the US, indicating what specific elements have been requested by town mayors for the stimulus package.

In it, they’ve got a link to what is probably the only town in Vermont large enough to participate.  Of course, by this, I mean Athens… wait… Athens?  Sorry.  No.  I mean, of course.  Burlington:

The funding requested from Burlington is large by my own internal standards, but I have no idea how the numbers fit into the grand scheme of things.  Burlington is asking for $145,075,439 in stimulus money, with an eye towards creating 2,736 jobs.  

These range from big ($10,000,000 to fully fund a downtown transit center, creating 240 jobs) to small ($100,000 for two jobs to retrofit the lighting in the parking garage for better energy efficiency).

The whole report is pretty interesting, for those of us who have time to slog through it all.

When we first spotted this owl, I thought this was the best look I’d have of it:

I was wrong.

Note #1: all the photographs, save for the one above, are clickable: they lead to larger images which provide details about the photo: settings, configuration etc.  They were all taken with a Sigma 50-500mm zoom mounted on a Pentax K20d.

Note #2: this post disparages some birders, but really it disparages people who don’t think through their actions or behavior when trying to observe birds.  I’ve made enough mistakes myself as a birder that I don’t feel qualified to judge such actions, but I also have the good sense to learn from my mistakes, which I suspect is not the case in the story I reference below.

Note #3: The main part of this diary is all new, referring to yesterday’s adventure in tracking down the Northern Hawk Owl.  After, I will revisit some pieces I wrote about other owls last year.

Sometimes when I go to look for owls, the looks are not good at all.  This, for example:

Is the only Great Horned Owl I’ve ever photographed outside of captivity.  It counts as a life bird (i.e., a bird I’ve never seen or, in my case, photographed, in the wild) but it’s not a very good look.  But you get used to just not having a very good look at some birds.  

I’m going to start the story of this particular bird by saying that this was the third trip I’d taken to photograph a Northern Hawk Owl.  I was at the point where I had started referring to “The Curse of the Northern Hawk Owl.”

The first was to Peru, NY.  I did manage to see the bird, briefly, but was thwarted by other birders, who thought the smart approach was to walk up and down the neighborhood to track it down.  Problem is, this particular owl, didn’t like people and would always retreat into the fields if people got too close.  We’d been warned about this, so we tried to do our birding mostly from inside the car.  Other people did not respect this so much, so my brief glimpse of the bird was distant.

The second attempt to find a Northern Hawk Owl was a few weeks later.  I took a trip to Center Harbor, NH.  There was snow, which made things complicated, but I didn’t realize how complicated.  After a few hours getting there, I got lost and drove around Center Harbor a bit trying to figure out where the bird was going to be.  I finally found Coe Hill Road (its chief location) about two hours later than I expected, but I was all excited.  

That was until I got halfway up the hill.

And got stuck.

I couldn’t get the car to go forward.  At all.

So I eventually figured out how to turn it around (which, on a windy, snowy road, with no idea when the next car is coming from up above, is all sorts of fun, I’ll tell you).  

And then I went home.  Well, first I stopped to eat and, as a consolation prize, photographed a couple hooded mergansers.  I was on the road for nine hours that day.

That was three weeks ago.

Saturday was a different story.

I should note that Northern Hawk Owls are uncommon within their own normal range and that New England is not even part of their range map, but for whatever reason this year, we’ve had quite a few in the area.  They’re called “Hawk Owls” because they tend to fly and hunt more like hawks than owls.  

These are birds known to migrate out of their territory from time to time, but sights like this are still pretty cool.  For me, a birder who’s never seen a Northern Hawk Owl, before this is a real opportunity.

First, a funny story: there were several of us watching this bird from the road, getting a view much like the one above when suddenly we realized there was a decent flock of pine grosbeaks hanging out right behind us.  So of course, all the birders started paying attention to the grosbeaks, because they’re beautiful birds and kind of neat looking.  I got quite a few photos of them:

Then, suddenly, they all flew off:  

Turns out there was a sharp-shinned hawk in the tree with them.  Moved too fast for me to get a photo, but it’s still pretty fun to see them.

But the real treat came after, when we got incredibly close looks at this owl.  

This one, of it looking right at me:

This one, of it perched on a tree, showing a little of its fluffy underside:

And this one (my favorite) of it just looking really awesome:

Thus, the curse of the Northern Hawk Owl, ended in Eden, VT, on a moderately cold Saturday afternoon.

That bird was really worth the trip.

A Photojournal About Owls, reprinted below, was originally posted in August of 2008:

My experience with barred owls is relatively limited, and my experience with them outside of captivity is even smaller.  When I posted about hummingbirds a few days ago, a lot of readers talked about hummingbirds being a sign of good luck.  For me, it’s owls.  These birds are something magnificent.  

Quite some time ago, we learned to be bird transporters for the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences (VINS).  In addition to its educational work, VINS does raptor rehab.  The first story I have about this started in 2004.

It started with us getting a call to transport an injured owl.  One of the great things about transporting birds is that they will often invite us to watch the intake exam, which means some really great close-up looks at birds.

In this particular case, we brought an owl in and the intake was not good.  The bird had been hit by a car, and there was a lot of damage to its head.  

This is never easy, knowing a bird you had close contact with, no matter how small, is likely to die.  We said our goodbyes to it and let it go, a bit sad for the experience.

A few months later, in February of 2005, we got a call from VINS that was a bit of surprise.  They were ready to release the owl, and wanted to know if we wanted to be the ones to do the release.

Now, let me add some backstory here: work was very complicated at the time.  I’d been doing this contract for only about four months and I had screwed up in a very major way the month before (*very* long story; about 40% my fault and 60% someone else’s but really, all my responsibility, so what the hell) so my supervisor was a bit concerned about things, and needed to go over some stuff with me.  I was supposed to get in touch with her the same day that the release was scheduled, but I really just didn’t hesitate about choosing to do the release.  I told her I needed to take care of something first but would contact her when I got home.  

I doubt everyone understands this, because birds are just not as relevant to most people’s consciousness, because when she found later that I had been out taking care of an owl her response was a bit incredulous, but everything in the long run worked out fine workwise.  They not only renewed my contract the next year, but for the next few years until budget cuts forced them to let me go just last month.  Anyway… so when we got to VINS they let me take a few photos; I was using an old 35mm without a very good lens, but I still managed to get a few decent pics of the experience, which I’m including here.  

We knew exactly where we were going to release the bird.  There was a good spot, not a long distance from where it had originally been found, with an open field surrounded by a treeline.

The procedure was simple– when you get to the spot, put the box down and open it up and wait for the bird to release itself.

This, of course, was more complicated than expected.  The bird wasn’t actually interested in leaving the box.  We thought maybe it was too far away from the trees or that we were too close to it so we went to move the box closer to the treeline.  That’s when the bird decided it was having none of that.  It sprung from the box and flew.  

In a box, bundled up, a Barred Owl looks small.  It’s a little fluffy ball hardly larger than a football.  Close up, with wings spread, it’s incredible, like nothing I’d ever seen before.

The bird flew and landed in a nearby tree.  As far as it was concerned, we were the enemy.  We were something to be feared.  But I understood that, and knew it would want to get away with me as quickly as possible.  But I just felt so good watching it happen.  This bird, this bird with a fatal diagnosis, had not only survived, but had survived to the point of returning to its natural place.  Some of the birds that VINS treats survive, but are unable to hunt on their own but still survive.  They probably have a good life.  They’re well-cared for and fed, and get plenty of food.  They’re used as demonstration animals and probably live longer than the animals in the wild.

But there’s something fierce and primal about these birds that’s lost when they’re used for such purposes.  I still love watching the demos and have great respect for the people who do them, but I prefer my birds in the wild.  

So the feeling that came with releasing this bird was one of immense release and respect.  I wouldn’t have traded that experience for the world.

The above photos are not high quality so I didn’t bother making them clickable to larger sizes, but all the remaining photos are clickable to larger versions from my web site.

Let’s fast forward to 2008.  Last January, at home one evening, I was greeted from outside by the phrase “get your camera and get out here.”  That’s usually worth my while, so I complied and was greeted with a very complicated look at a barred owl that was sitting in the trees.  It wasn’t easy, but I eventually found it and was about to photograph it when it flew off.  

It took a few moments for me to find it again and suddenly, when it perched on a wire, I was able to shoot off a few photographs of it.  This one:

Was the best.  This is, in fact, the only barred owl picture I’ve ever gotten which wasn’t connected to bird rehab in some fashion.

Which brings me to my next story.

We sometimes get some odd calls from VINS.  This particular time, in early May, we got called to deal with a pigeon.  We probably wouldn’t have bothered, but it had been one of those days where we were finding it extremely difficult to get motivated to do anything, so we figured, we’d at least get out of the house.  This time we were delivering the pigeon to the house of a well-known bird rehabilitation expert.  He lived sort of way out in the middle of nowhere, but we’d heard great things about his house and knew we might see some cool birds there.

After a bit of very complicated travels, we managed to locate the person with the pigeon and were able to locate the rehab house (getting lost once on the way to each), but when we got to the rehabber’s house, he asked if we wanted to see the the owl he was working on.  The answer boiled down to “duh.”  When we got to the barn, there was this creature sitting inside the barn:

Fred explained that he had tried to release the bird once before, but it couldn’t fly as well as he’d thought, but he was getting a physical therapist in the next few days to get the bird’s wings back in order again.  It very much looked like it had an injured wing.

Not so much so.  Apparently sometimes Barred owls will hang their wings that way when resting, because the next thing that happened gave us all a start.

Imagine our shock when, in fact, the bird chose that moment to take off.  It happened so fast, it took all of us by surprise.  It flew directly over our heads, out the barn door, and landed in a nearby tree.  If I’d had my camera focused on it when that happened, I’m sure I’d have fallen flat on my back.  Instead, I spotted where it landed and, having much better equipment than the last time this happened, I was able to get a much better photo:

Needless to say, Fred was a bit surprised by this (just as we were), but he was also thrilled; he’d underestimated the bird’s flying ability but it was clearly able to handle itself.  It flew far and fast, fairly quickly.  It was good.  The only disappointment was that he’d scheduled a release in front of a school group for the following week, so that was out (oops).

I’ve got two other photos here, both composites of a few photos.  The first is of Short-eared owls:

The two on the left are of the same bird.  I almost didn’t get a good picture of it because after I spotted the bird, another photographer stepped in front of me to get a photo.  I’m still a little bitter about that, but I managed to work out some pretty good photos regardless.  This was at Parker River Wildlife Refuge in Plum Island, MA.  The one on the right is from the next winter Salisbury Beach, across the river from Plum Island.  The picture up top is also of that same bird from Salisbury beach.

This, on the other hand, is a pair of Snowy Owls, again from Parker River Wildlife Refuge.

[and one more, from last weekend]:

Again, feel free to use this as an open photo and/or birding thread.

A couple final notes:

This is my gallery of owl photos.

Birding New England is the birding blog I’m trying to get off the ground.

I don’t post all my photographs on ‘Kos, ’cause I take a lot of photographs.  If you want weekly (or daily) e-mail alerts when I’ve put new photos on my web site, you can do so via this link.

This link will get you to an index of all the owl pages on Cornell’s lab of ornithology if you’d like to learn more.

And one last Barred Owl story that I forgot about before:

A friend of ours, whom we met while birding and is a major life-long birder (we’re still novices), told me a great story about a Barred owl.  Here’s the e-mail he sent about it:

Had a barred sitting on my feeder the other night. Today I had a mouse in a trap in the basement so I opened the front door and threw it out hoping the owl might find it. Before it hit the ground the owl came out of nowhere and took it. Now it is sitting near the house waiting for the next handout.

Per today’s Rutland Herald:

Gov. James Douglas alone would hold the purse strings to nearly $50 million in federal money under a Senate-added provision to the congressional stimulus plan.

Senators included the clause at the urging of U.S. governors, who have sought wider latitude in dealing with vast state budget shortfalls.

“Under the Senate bill, the state of Vermont could expect to receive about $125 million over the next two years to help plug important budget holes in education, public safety, economic development and human services programs,” Sen. Patrick Leahy said in a statement Wednesday night.

sigh.

This isn’t a done deal, and there needs to be pushback against this.  There is currently some pushback from Shumlin:

“It would be the Legislature’s position that the Constitution requires any appropriation of funds from the federal government to go through the appropriation process,” said Shumlin, a Putney Democrat.

Okay, not so much “pushback” as “gentle nudge back,” but still…

And yet…

Ben Stein described the brouhaha over his selection as commencement speaker at the University of Vermont as “*laughable*” on Tuesday called the whole episode “*pathetic*.”

So much for “graciously.”

In a phone call to the Free Press on Tuesday, Stein said that describing his views as “antithetical to scientific inquiry” was “a wildly unfair characterization.” He said he was by no means “anti-science,” as some of his critics have described him.

Anyone who follows Scientific American’s 60-second science, knows better.  It quotes Stein from the film “expelled” as quoting Darwin:

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

Scientific American, however, continues the Darwin quote, completing it in full:

“The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.”

Back to Stein from the Free Press:

“Mr. Stein has also expressed opinions on subjects unrelated to economics, most notably with respect to evolutionary theory, intelligent design, and the role of science in the Holocaust,” Fogel said in a statement to the UVM community Monday. “Those views are highly controversial, to say the least.”

Stein called the university’s response to the furor “chicken sh**, and you can quote me on that.”

As for the commencement speech, he said, “I didn’t really want to do it in the first place.”

I’d say this is win-win.

Apparently IBM has a plan.  H/t to Crooks and Liars

Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that’s developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.

So here’s the deal: if you work at IBM and are worried about the economy, you shouldn’t be.  Why not?  Because you can get relocated to India, be forced to follow local laws and sell your home in Vermont for rock-bottom prices.

Way to go!

I’ve posted before about health care and problems with it.  Well, here’s a connected problem with the idea of privatized health care.

There’s a long complicated story I wrote earlier about the build up to this, but here’s the shorter version: I applied for Catamount in mid-November and it took six weeks to get final approval, with lots of redundant and unnecessary steps in the meantime.  But I got my forms into Catamount Blue by late December and when I contacted them about it, they told me I was all set provided all my paperwork was in by December 29th, which it was, and that I should get something from them by mid/late January but that I shouldn’t worry, that I was covered, etc.

In the meantime, I got hired for a new job, and I will have insurance through the new job soon, but thought I had a few weeks to decide which plan I wanted, review the information, etc.

Not so much so.  Catamount Blue, even though I was approved for care from the state of Vermont and have been paying a monthly premium to the state, rejected my application for care because I forgot to check off marital status on the application.  

Of course, they send me this notification on a Friday so I can’t call anyone to resolve it until next week, but in the meantime, I have medical appointments scheduled for Monday that I will probably have to cancel.

In the meantime, I’m concerned that this will cause my new insurance to view this period as a gap in coverage, giving them the option to reject treatment for prior conditions.

I am working under the belief that this will all get resolved, even if I have to hire a lawyer to intervene, but this is a major “you have got to be kidding me” situation.  It’s completely absurd to reject an application because of a minor and irrelevant clerical error.  I have resources and ways to handle this.

I can’t imagine what this is like for people without means.  This is insane and inhumane.

Per Today’s Rutland Herald:

I propose a budget adjustment that includes a number of difficult changes. Eliminating the VPharm programs, which provide supplemental prescription drug assistance to Medicare beneficiaries, is particularly difficult. When the federal Medicare prescription drug benefit, part D, was instituted, my Administration and the Legislature authorized a new wrap-around benefit to allow coverage comparable to the state assistance programs that were previously in place.

[…]

For exempt employees, I have taken steps to exercise those alternatives – as well as eliminating positions – to save state money and share the sacrifice broadly. Last summer, I denied cost of living adjustments to exempt employees making over $60,000 per year. Further, as part of the most recent rescission, I ordered the same group to take a 5% reduction in pay. I am grateful that most elected officials and the Judiciary voluntarily joined me in this cost saving measure.

Unfortunately, the state’s multi-year contract precludes such options for classified employees – despite the fact that many state employees have requested such measures to avoid layoffs. This leaves a single, blunt instrument, reductions-in-force, as the only option to reduce labor expenses for remaining state employees.

Reducing our workforce in the middle of a recession is not our first choice. But the growth in payroll costs in the current economy make this difficult step a necessity. In addition to 60 positions eliminated through program changes, my recommended fiscal 2010 budget includes $17 million in General Fund savings by eliminating 600 positions within state government. While some of these positions may be cut through further vacancies and retirements, there will be reductions-in-force and an impact to state services.

I know this is difficult news that will affect the lives of many people. But given our current contract and the need to make labor costs sustainable for the long-term, a reduction in the state workforce must be part of our overall plan.

And now for the shell game:

At the other end of the spectrum, I propose increased support by 20% for early care and education to bring greater balance to our education continuum. This funding will be directed through the Department for Children and Families for increased quality to ensure that more children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn and for improved access for lower income families through the child care subsidy program.

While he might be claiming to propose this, it’s kind of odd, since at the exact same time he’s doing this, the administration has been drastically cutting child care benefits.  See this piece from December 11th for some details on that.

He can pretend to have a commitment to and interest in child care, but at the same time, propose a $2,000,000 cut to human services grants.  All the local resource and referral agencies which provide support for child care providers, parents receiving subsidized child care, referral services and a host of other benefits get part of their funding from those human services grants.

He can pretend to have a commitment to and an interest in early childhood education, but without an understanding of what child care is and what the purpose of it is (it is not so that they arrive at kindergarten “ready to learn”), false increases in funding provide no useful service.  

He can pretend to have a commitment to and support for children, but without being willing to support reach-up and TANF, he’s basically saying he doesn’t give a damn about children.

He can pretend to support early childhood curricula but without having a sufficient number of workers to review the operating conditions of child care providers, he’s saying that their safety is irrelevant.

Jim Douglas clearly wants the cover of being able to say he’s supporting Vermont’s kids.  

We can’t let him get away with that.

That’s the headline (minus the quotes) from a piece in today’s Rutland Herald.

I think it’s an odd way to frame it.  Why not “Vermonters turn to assistance from diminishing fund?”

Perhaps because that doesn’t frame it as the fault of the unemployed, who are clearly at fault for being a drain on our system.  It couldn’t possibly be the responsibility of the state for failing to meet the needs of the system by underfunding it, or the responsibility of employers to pay more into the system.

[update]

[From Montpelier Vermont] —

From Montpelier, it was standing room only at City Hall to watch President Obama address the nation.  I’ve never imagined so many people crowding together in Montpelier, or anywhere else in Vermont, to see a television broadcast.

It felt like a celebratory 21st Century fireside chat.

Guess who’s helping to fund the Governor’s ball?

Today’s Rutland Herald has an AP piece by Dave Gram, which refers to Vermont Yankee as a “platinum sponsor” of the Inaugural Ball.  

Vermont Yankee Spokestooge Rob Williams claimed it was no different from a donation to the Vermont Foodbank.  

This, of course, begs the question: why didn’t VY just donate $5,000 to the Vermont Foodbank directly instead.  Wouldn’t that have saved on administrative costs?  Rep Nease had the same question, quoted in the article as saying “I just think the appearance of the governor accepting $5,000 from Entergy is not OK.  They… could have given to the Foodbank directly.”

So really, what’s the big deal.  It’s not as though Vermont Yankee is in a major battle for its continuing existence, one in which the Governor is a major player of some sort.  I mean, obviously, if that were the case, we’d be in a whole different situation.

Right?

Right?