Per Josh Stilts in today’s Brattleboro Reformer:

…operators… claimed that a closure of the nuclear plant infringes on their civil liberties because their operating licenses are specific to Vermont Yankee. To operate another facility, they would have to go through rigorous training,..

So let’s get this straight: they chose to take a job at a plant that was scheduled to close in 2012.  And now they’re suing Vermont because they don’t like that they may have to get training elsewhere to work at another plant.

Did Vermont make the regulations that require them to get training to work elsewhere?  

Did Vermont make them chose to work at a plant that was scheduled to close in 2012?

What exactly is their argument here?  We don’t wanna?  You can’t make us?

I’d say this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, but I’ve been following VY news for some time now.  Sadly, this doesn’t even come close.

It’s a smaller version– clicking on the image gets you to a larger one.

Last weel I posted a great big warbler quiz.  Below are the answers.

Bird #1: Notice the black and white all over the bird?  That’s why it’s called a Black and White Warbler.

Bird #2: The biggest ID of the Blackburnian Warbler is the bright orange/red wash on its face.

Bird #3: The Northern Parula is a fairly colorful bird, noted for its mixture of blue and yellow.

Bird #4: The Yellow Warbler is, by far, the most yellow of the warblers.  Almost entirely yellow save for a little orange/red on the chest (not always visible) and wings that are a little darker:

Bird #5: It’s easy to confuse some forms of the common yellowthroat with this bird, the Nashville Warbler  Grey head, eye ring, and yellow throat and body is its primary ID marker, but some forms of the Nashville also show a red spot on top of the head.  The biggest way to distinguish it from the yellowthroat, however, is the legs, which are black, as opposed to the lighter legs of the yellowthroat:

Bird #6: See that line across the eye and the rounded bit beneath it?  If you rotate that, you get a “P” form, which is how I remember the Prairie Warbler, a small, beautiful bird, which has a flash of white in its tail when it flies (similar to the dark-eyed junco).

Bird #7: That black mask and darker wing on an otherwise yellow bird is a primary characteristic of the Blue-Winged warbler:

Bird #8: The Northern Waterthrush is a light bird with dark, well-defined, streaks.

Bird #9: The above bird is easy to confuse with the Louisiana Waterthrush, which is like a faded out version of the Northern.

Bird #10: I think of the American Redstart as kind of like a warbler-sized oriole.  That’s not really right, but that orange and black compressed into such a tiny body makes it easy for me to remember.

Bird #11: The key factor here is that orange spot on the head of the Ovenbird:

Bird #12: That combination of the black throat and the yellow-green head can only mean black-throated-green warbler:

Bird #13: This blackpoll warbler is tricky to ID, even for experienced birders:

Bird #14: This is the fall form of the Pine Warbler.  You’ll see its Spring plumage form a little later:

Bird #15: that chestnut color on this bird’s side is a tip off that it’s a Chestnut-Sided Warbler:

Bird #16: Yellow bird, red streaks and red cap make for a fairly easy ID of a Palm Warbler.

Bird #17: Blue head, white around the eye, white eyebrow and streaking coming down from a ring around the neck with a yellow chest are classic marks for the Magnolia Warbler.

Bird #17 is easy to confuse with bird #18, but there are a few tell tale differences: eye ring vs white around/near the eye and a simple necklace rather than streaks down the chest are the marks I use.  Here’s bird #18, the Canada Warbler.

Bird #19 & #20 are all different versions of the Yellow-Rumped warbler.  To me, it reminds me of a magnolia with white on teh chest instead of yellow:

Bird #21: The color on the breast can be classified as “bay” so this is a Bay-Breasted Warbler.

Bird #22: The black throat on an otherwise dark blue bird is a defining factor of the Black-Throated Blue warbler.

Bird #23: you’ve seen this one earlier, too.  It’s the spring plumage of the Blackpoll Warbler.

Bird #24: this is the female version of one from earlier, which is a very tough ID if you’re unfamiliar with the female form of the Black-Throated Blue Warbler.

Bird #25: we see these all Summer long in Vermont.  The yellow throat and the commonness of the bird classify it as a Common Yellowthroat.

Bird #26:This is the Spring version of a Pine Warbler [my error] Yellow-throated vireo.

Bird #27: this is the non-breeding form of the Tennessee Warbler.

Bird #28: if you see a bird that looks somewhat like a yellow warbler but with a black cap, it’s a Wilson’s Warbler.:

Bird #29: this one was a shock to find– it’s a Townsend’s Warbler, which is virtually unheard of in New England, but one hung out in New Hampshire for some time last November.

Bird #30: This is the female form of the American Redstart.

As usual, treat this as an open birds & birding thread.

Thanks everyone.  Good birding!

Warblers are small, fast moving birds, which can be very hard to identify, but when you are lucky with them, it’s pretty awesome.

This weekend I coined the term “Occam’s Warbler” which is a reference to the tendency of birdwatchers to look for the extraordinary and bizarre when the more obvious might be the case.  Sometimes this works, but sometimes it can get in your way.  One bird below is way out of its territory.  

And this bird, for example:

is one I thought was a warbler until I looked at the photograph.  I saw something vaguely warbler-shaped, with the general color and wing bars of pine warbler and thought “nice!  I don’t often get to photograph those” so I snapped a few photos.

Then, later, I realized what I had: distinct pale around the eye, slight hook at the end of the beak.  This wasn’t just a white-eyed vireo.  For me, it’s the white-eyed vireo, the only one I’ve ever found.  

So below– I want to say that almost every bird below is typical for New England, save one (I’ll let you guys try to figure out which one that is).  There are routine reports of them, pretty much every year, and I’ve managed to photograph most of these birds in more than one year, and I have never taken a photo of a warbler outside of New England.  

But there is this tendency birders have to go for the fantastical: we’re not satisfied with the extraordinary that exists in the every day, so we want something more exceptional.  We try to find something bizarre and unusual in the normal to make it more exciting, but the truth of the matter is, most of what you see when birding is “normal.”  

It is, however, also wonderful, beautiful, magnificent and surprising.  Savannah Sparrows, with their shocking yellow, where you expect to find a song sparrow.  A lone canada warbler mixed in with a flock of magnolias.  Sometimes it’s something completely out of the ordinary, but sometimes it’s just a weird variation, such as this bird which I’m certain is a purple finch…

…despite its odd coloring.  Everything about this bird screams purple finch to me, except that it’s a deep red at points.  So what’s more likely: a bird that’s nothing like any bird anywhere in my literature?  Something unheard of?  Or a purple finch that’s using red cedar scraps as parts of its nesting material?  I’m not saying it’s impossible that it’s something else (after all, my white-eyed vireo was kind of a surprise).  I’m saying that when you have a simple and clear cut explanation, it’s sometimes better to just go with that.

So… Occam’s Warbler.  

Below is a warbler quiz– I’ve included a lot of photos of warblers.  In every case, you can click on the image to get the information about the bird.  It also gets you to a larger version, but see if you can ID some of the birds without looking.  Some are trickier than others.  Some are duplicated under other bird #s, but generally with a different form of plumage.

I’ll start with an easy one, because it looks a lot like its name:

Bird #1.

Bird #2:

Bird #3:

Bird #4 (this one also looks a lot like its name):

Bird #5:

Bird #6:

Bird #7:

Bird #8: One that often confuses me:

Bird #9:

Bird #10:

Bird #11 (not a great shot but enough to ID it):

Bird #12:

Bird #13 (fall form– very hard):

Bird #14: (also advanced / fall form):

Bird #15:

Bird #16:

Bird #17:

Bird #17 is easy to confuse with bird #18, but there are a few tell tale differences: eye ring vs white around/near the eye and a simple necklace rather than streaks down the chest are the marks I use.  Here’s bird #18:

Bird #19:

Bird #20: this is a fall form of one you’ve seen earlier:

Bird #21:

Bird #22:

Bird #23: you’ve seen this one earlier, too:

Bird #24: this is the female version of one from earlier:

Bird #25: we see these all Summer long in Vermont:

Bird #26: This is one that’s appeared elsewhere:

Bird #27: this is not the most obvious form, but it’s the only one I’ve ever photographed:

Bird #28: these guys sometimes nest in Vermont:

Bird #29:

Bird #30 (you’ve seen the male version of this bird earlier):

As usual, treat this as an open birds & birding thread.

Thanks everyone.  Good birding!

So the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird is in the 3-3.5″ range.  I got this photo at 500mm, without using a tripod, with an 8lb camera/lens combination.  No, I don’t know how I did it either:

This is the first hummingbird I’ve seen this year, so it was a real treat to get such a good photo of it.

A quick note before I continue: these are mostly smaller versions of the photos.  They’re all hotlinked to larger versions on my web site.   Every photo was taken with a Pentax K-7 with a Sigma 50-500mm lens.  No shots involved tripods, but a few of the heron type birds involved using either my car or a wooden fence to stabilize the photos.  

One of the major events of Spring in New England is migratory warblers.  Warblers are small birds.  They can range from 4″ – 5.5″ with a few variations slightly outside that range.  I’ve had some good luck with them in the past few weeks:

Black-and-White Warblers are not that difficult to find if you know where to look for them.  They have an easy to identify call (like a squeaky wheel) and are fairly aggressive:

Palm Warblers are also fairly prominent for this time of year, but unlike the B&W warblers, they won’t stick around for very long.  I almost never see them outside of May but at this time of year, I can get some great looks at them:

I don’t have a good read on Pine Warblers.  I see them rarely, so I don’t know their patterns well.  I almost never get great photos of them, which is why this particular shot is quite pleasing to me:

Yellow Warblers, on the other hand, are commonplace here in the Green Mountain State, all Summer long.  They nest at several of my local birding spots and I’ll be able go get much better photos than this one:

Yellow-Rumped Warblers are among the earliest and latest warblers we get– they can survive in colder climates than some warblers, due to their ability to digest certain types of berries that other warblers can’t, which allows them opportunity for food other than insects (the primary warbler diet):

Chipping Sparrows are the Summer American Tree Sparrow.  I almost never see both birds on the same day, and a true maker of the new season is when the Chipping come in as the Tree Sparrows are on their way out:

Baltimore Orioles invariably show up here within the first few days of May.  I often hear them before I get to see them, but yesterday one flew right up and landed on a feeder in front of me:

Dark-Eyed Juncos are usually gone by now; they’re primarily winter birds (though you can find them at higher elevations year-round) so I was surprised to see one pop up last week:

Evening Grosbeaks tend to show up in our yard twice a year, during migration, sticking around for as little as a few minutes and as much as a few days before continuing on their path until they come back the other way.  This afternoon, one let me get a lot closer to it than I expected:

The Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, on the other hand, sticks around for us all Summer:

Northern Flickers hang out year-round, but they only do their mating displays, such as the yellow fantail, around this time of year:

Great Blue Herons will go wherever there’s enough open water for them to fish.  I caught this one flying from one spot to the other last Sunday:

Great Egrets, like herons, go where the fish are:

One thoroughly unexpected bird was this White Faced Ibis that showed up on Plum Island, MA.  I managed to get photos of it shortly before it met its untimely demise under attack by (and I am not joking) a peregrine falcon:

The American Bittern is a difficult bird to find.  It stalks its way through reeds and when senses someone around, it will stick its neck straight up and pretend to be reeds.  That’s why I felt particularly lucky to get this look at one, which started with me spotting it out of the corner of my eye driving down a road at 40mph.   I usually find them when they’re pointed straight up like this, so it was pretty neat to get to see one actually pause, notice me, and do its point straight up into the air thing:

UPDATE: H. 97 passes House.

I’ve seen updates from inside the State House that H. 97 has passed the House. Don’t know any details, so this can stand until Julie or another FPer can fill us in.

Jack

I’ll keep this short:

There’s a bill up for a vote in the House right now, H.97, which would allow child care providers in Vermont the right to form a union.  This doesn’t force them to form a union, put them in a union or otherwise make them do anything they don’t wish to do.  It just gives them the option to choose to do so, if they so desire.

So I have an extremely simple question:

why hasn’t this passed yet?  

It’s not something that should be even remotely controversial.  It’s simple, obvious, and clear: while other states are attempting to dismantle collective bargaining, why isn’t Vermont jumping at the chance to show how different we are?

To be clear: I expect Republicans to vote against this.  But in a state with Republicans in a fairly extreme minority, why is this not something that just breezed through the House and Senate without a notice?  Between Progressives and Democrats, this should have already passed the Senate.  As it stands, it’s ready for a vote in the House this week, but won’t even make it to the Senate until next session.

Have Republicans successfully shifted the debate to the point where we’re suddenly scared of the right to form a union?  Are child care providers somehow threatening to us?  Do legislators picture small children luring  people into a back alley where women wait to whack them in the knees with roller pins if they don’t pay protection money?  

I even had one legislator e-mail me about this who complained that someone affiliated with the union drive was pissing people off, which is why it became less likely to pass.  Seriously?  Is that what we’re dealing with?  Egos so fragile that they are incapable of supporting child care providers because they think someone was mean to them?  

This is absurd.  I get that out of state groups are spending a considerable amount of money to fight this thing, but when have we, as a state, ever cared what out of state groups are doing or let them influence our policy decisions?

This should be a no-brainer.  But clearly, even that’s too much for some.

It’s known that Vermont is a dairy state, and it’s widely understood that many of our farm workers are undocumented.  Some even pay taxes.  

Despite being a fairly crucial aspect of our own industry, and despite the current existence of federal laws which restrict access to undocumented workers, our own senate has supported a “kick ’em while they’re down” amendment.  One of my own Senators, Jeanette White, did the right thing here:

Through a late amendment, the bill also would exclude undocumented workers, which Windham County Sen. Jeanette White said was unnecessary.

“There was an amendment that was put on that says that Green Mountain Care can’t be provided to undocumented workers. And in my mind, it was unnecessary to put that in there because federal law already says you can’t use federal money for undocumented foreigners,” said White, a Democrat. “It was put in at the last minute and I don’t think it does anything.”

You’d think in such a liberal area of one of the most liberal states in the country, you’d have both the state senators on board with White’s statement.  But, in fact, Peter Galbraith, new in the VT state senate after running on a platform of “hey, I’ve been on TV!” voted to support this do-nothing-but-bash-immigrants-anyway piece of dreck.

For those of you unfamiliar with Galbraith, while he does live in Vermont, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in Vermont.  His campaign itself was a series of public appearances in which me said vaguely leftish things that sounded nice, few of which had anything to do with Vermont itself, and when pressed on issues about Vermont specifically, showed little to no interest in discussing the topic.  

But this is what happens when a well-known leftist runs for a local office in a community which is known for not only being leftist, but leftist to the point where even I think they’ve gone over the deep end too many times.

TO be clear: this isn’t the sort of amendment you support to change policy.  This is the sort of amendment you support in order so that, down the line, when running for higher office, you can say “I’ve been tough on immigrants.”  It’s not about clarity.  It’s political gamesmanship, the sort we see too often.

Galbraith’s a politician, and probably a good one.  After all, he managed to get elected to a political office without actually promoting much in the way of genuine policy initiative.

It’s not that he doesn’t have goals.  It’s just that those goals do not seem to have anything whatsoever to do with Vermont, its people, or even its migrant workers.

The last week has been kind of insane.  I’ve been ridiculously busy and constantly feeling overwhelmed.  And yet… I somehow manage to find time to bird.  And even when I’m not looking for birds, they manage to find me.  

Take, for example, when I got lost and ended up in Orford, NH.  In the process of trying to figure out where the hell I was, I came across, of all things, a Peregrine Falcon:

And while that was a really nice look at a damned fine bird, it was far from the best I’ve had this month.

Sidenote, before I continue– these are all smaller versions of the photos. They are, however, all clickable to larger versions with details (location where photo was taken, details on camera info, etc.)

With Spring comes bugs, and with bugs comes flycatchers.  This Eastern Phoebe is a fairly reliable sign of Spring’s return:

Less reliable, but still nice is the Fox Sparrow.  It’s kind of like a great big, rusty brown, song sparrow.  They’ve been hanging out by our feeders for the past few weeks now:

Mergansers, such as these hooded mergansers, show up in full mating mode:

And, of course, there are swallows.  The trick I’ve learned to photographing swallows is fairly simple: take a whole lot of photos, and get lucky.  In this case, I got very lucky:

And speaking of lucky: dark morning, poor light– I didn’t get this wood duck in time, even though it was very close, but the shot a moment later was actually quite beautiful:        

And, of course, a visit to Parker River Wildlife Refuge, yielded lots of nice birds including Northern Pintails, which we only tend to get in migration:

Not to mention the Summer-long resident Killdeer:

And a bird I much more frequently see in the Northern Climate of Vermont (year-round, not just in Spring) than on coastal Massachusetts, the small and elusive Brown Creeper:

And back in Vermont, there are Ring-necked ducks all over the place right now.        

But the bird that wins the week, that wins the season for me so far, is the tricky to find, difficult to photograph American Bittern.  This bird was hanging out in a bunch of reeds and I just randomly spotted it while driving down the road.  It was so unexpected that I almost thought I’d imagined it.  Indeed, when I went back to photograph it, I thought I had because it took me a few minutes to find it again.  When I first spotted it, it was stalking through the reeds:

But as soon as it noticed me photographing it, it decided to morph into “I’m hiding and you can’t see me” mode:

“See, I’m not here.  I look like a reed.  You can’t see me.”

True story, from a birder friend of mine: he once found a Bittern standing a few feet away from a copse of tall reeds.  It spotted him and immediately just shot upright as in the photos above.  He could, of course, see it because it wasn’t actually in the reeds.  He watched at this bird figured out that it was still exposed, those eyes darting back and forth for a moment.  Then it just sort of sidled its way over.  The way he described it comes across as something you’d see in a cartoon– I could just picture it holding up a sign that says “I’m not here.”  Or maybe it was attempting a jedi mind trick: “This is not the heron you’re looking for.”

So… Spring.  Even when I’m not birding, the birding finds me.

A bill just passed out of the human services committee.  The original intent of the legislation, H97, was to allow for child care providers in the state of Vermont to form a union.  Some of the provisions of the original bill included allowing for providers to choose to form a union so that they can, if they desire, bargain with the state over a variety of issues including:

1. subsidy rates and reimbursement practices;


2. retirement and health care benefits;


3. professional development and training support;


4. child-to-staff ratios;


5. licensing fees, as well as other related fees;


6. grievance procedures;


7. any other matter related to regulating child care within the state;

This legislation also allowed for an automatic collection of dues for union members and covered every kind of child care providers regulated by the state.

I will state again that this doesn’t force providers to do this.  It allows them to choose to do so.

So what passed out of committee?

1. subsidy rates and reimbursement practices;


2. retirement and health care benefits;


3. professional development and training support;


4. child-to-staff ratios;


5. licensing fees, as well as other related fees;


6. grievance procedures;


7. any other matter related to regulating child care within the state;

Yup.  Anything related to benefits?  Cut out of the bill.  Anything related to child to staff ratios?  Gone.  Anything that’s not subsidy, professional development or grievance procedures?  Nixed.  Nada.

You know what else got cut out of the bill as passed?

Licensed centers.  This includes some fairly small centers, but it also includes those large child care facilities which deal with a great many children in Vermont.  They won’t have the choice to form a union and work with the state collectively under the new version of the bill.  

What else got cut?  The automatic collection of dues.  This is how you nickel and dime a union to death: instead of having dues automatically pulled out (as with any paycheck for any union member), forcing the organizing body to collect the dues themselves is an administrative nightmare and will have to be handled provider by provider.  

This, folks, is how you hobble a union before it’s even been formed.  And this was done in a committee controlled by Democrats, many of whom have just turned their backs on the people who work absurdly long hours, for ridiculously low pay, to take care of Vermont’s children.

But even with this watered down version of a union, there’s one Democrat who didn’t even want to give child care providers the tiniest of voices.  That Democrat is none other than district CHITTENDEN-8 rep. Bill Frank, of Underhill, who just happens to share his district with poll hack George Till (I’ll leave it to you guys to figure out just what to say about that).

Just an aside: I was at the house for some of the testimony over this bill.  Its opponents invoked the anti-union measures in Michigan as a reason not to support this, saying Michigan’s an example of what goes wrong when we let the wrong people form unions.  

I expect that from Republicans, and I expect it from people who think themselves better than working class people, and better than “the help.”

I forget from time to time that that can sometimes include Democrats.

So let’s assume for a moment that the survey which George Till released is actually a survey conducted of physicians, without duplication.   Even if this were true, there would still be multiple problems with the data as presented and the survey as presented.  

To highlight a few examples.  Let’s take, for example, the responses to question #2, which asks about whether or not there should be additional protections for physicians or patients if physician-assisted suicide were to become legal.

The choices are yes, no, and no response.  They break down, respectively to 71, 471, and 68.  The interpretation actually ignores the skipped question, presenting it as 13.1% and 86.9%.  But it should really be 11.6%, 77.2% and 11.1%.

So that’s kind of misrepresenting things to begin with.

But here’s the part I just love- there’s a 2nd section of that question if you answer yes, there’s a follow up: if you think there are more protections necessary what do you suggest they should be, shortened to “if so, what?”  

Remember that there were 71 people who said “yes” to that question.  So you would think that there would be 71 or fewer answers to the “if so, what?” question.

Not so much so.

There are 98 answers to that question.  

This, to me, suggests a certain lack of quality control.

These are just a couple examples from problems with the presentation and use of the survey from a methodological standpoint.  On the other side of the flip, I’ll talk more about the philosophy of surveys and what they do and do not do

So let’s talk for a moment about polling.  You often see people surveyed on a variety of issues– they usually discuss polling a number of people and include a margin of error.  This is based on statistical analysis of sample size vs population size.  The larger sampling percentage of a population you get, the more likely you are to have results which fall within certain margins.  Everyone shoots for a confidence interval of about 95%.

So when you see a margin of error, for example, of +/- 4%, it means that given the number of people polled and the size of the population being estimated, 95% of the time, the results you get from that poll will accurately reflect the population at large.  The other 5% of the time, it’s just sampling error.  

When people present surveys like Till’s, they often do so as though it’s in some fashion similar to those polls and surveys.  

It’s similar, in the same sense that a raccoon is similar to a horse.  They both have fur and are capable of walking on all fours.  But there are a whole lot of differences.

Till’s survey doesn’t do random sampling.  It was sent out to a large swath of people, a portion of whom (36%) responded.  This means that the responses are self-selected.  I.e., people who feel passionately about these issues and think it’s worth their time to make their voice heard shared their thoughts.  Those who didn’t either didn’t have time, thought it was worthless, or just didn’t feel a strong need to weigh in.  

You can’t interpret much from that.  If I were trying to be political about this, I could claim that only 10% of those surveyed said they’d leave the state if single-payer were enacted, since all 1600+ were surveyed, but the response rate was only 36%.  But that’s a ridiculous claim, because it (a) takes the “survey” seriously to begin with and (b) ignores proper methodology for interpreting and understanding survey results.

So what you have here is something more akin to a poll in Cosmopolitan magazine or any other such pop culture thing which makes for nice press, but doesn’t say anything meaningful or valuable about the topic.  I’d be fine with that, except for the fact that it’s presented as though it actually is academic and meaningful.  

Specifically:

Rep. George Till (D-Jericho) today released the results of the 2011 Vermont Physician Legislative Survey. Till conducted the survey with a Departmental faculty support grant from the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Doctor Till had assistance from Anastasia Coutinho MPH, UVM College of Medicine class of 2014.

Now this offends me.  At least the Doyle survey isn’t presented as anything but one man’s quirky attempt to take take “the pulse of voters on hot issues.”

But Till?  He presented this as though it’s science and put it under the auspices of actual meaning.

To me, that’s unacceptable.