Friday Bird Blogging: Maine Trip Report

Crossposted to Birding New England:

Note: every photo on this page is a clickable link to a larger version of the photo

This week, we took a few days to do some birding in Maine, staying in Wells and visiting a few nearby areas. Some of our best looks were at Warblers, like this Chestnut-sided warbler, but we also had great looks at some other birds, including two new life birds.

Our primary place to bird was Laudholm Trust, a great spot for finding all sorts of warblers, as well as Eastern Towhees, thrushes and, apparently, a porcupine.

Wells Beach, on the other hand, can give great looks at a variety of birds, such as this surf scoter, and this pair of horned grebes (the first I've ever seen).

Day one started off with a walk through Laudholm Trust, which yielded several species of warblers, including the black and white warbler shown here. We also spotted a porcupine, and a trip to the Wells Beach later in the evening resulted in my first ever sighting of horned grebes and this really nice look at a Surf Scoter.



The next morning we did a walk on the Marginal Way. We thought it would yield nice warblers (as it did last year), but no such luck. Afterwards, we went to Scarborough Marsh, and didn't see a lot (again, last year, it had a lot to offer, but this time it was quieter).

Another walk through Laudholm Trust didn't yield much birdwise, but it did get us another great look at the porcupine we'd seen sleeping the day before.

The next day was the really great day. The morning's extensive walk through Laudholm yielded two species of thrush (Veery and Hermit Thrush) as well as some great warblers and a bobolink:




The afternoon included a trip to Fort Foster Park in Kittery, which gave me my third thrush of the day, a Wood Thrush and a scarlet tanager.

The next morning involved another quick walk through Laudholm, which gave me some great looks at the Eastern Towhee pictured here, another look at a Veery, a look at a bird we haven't been able to ID yet (and have no photo of so I don't know why I'm even mentioning it except it was frustrating), a Magnolia Warbler, more chestnut-sideds and a black and white warbler.
After packing up we decided to swing by Kennebunk Plains on the way home, in the hopes of spotting two life birds: a grasshopper sparrow (no) and an Upland Sandpiper (YES!).

The Upland Sandpiper was a treat because we were just about to walk to another part of the plains when we heard this very odd sounding bird call, then land. We moved close enough to get a look at it. I was sure it was an upland sandpiper primarily because I know the look and call of just about every other sandpiper in that bird's size range that we'd be likely to see in New England and it didn't fit any of them, so that was cool. Looking at Peterson's after the fact verified that we were right about the I.D.

We also managed to spot some vesper sparrows, along with a Pine Warbler and a small flock of prairie warblers (see photo on right) which were moving around like crazy and not easy to photograph, but I still managed to pull them off.

So, no grasshopper sparrow, but still, a day with a new life bird was cool, and it's not like it's as easy for me to find new life birds as it was two years ago.

All in all, this was a great trip: lots of good walks, some extremely good looks at very small birds, some great views of two new life birds and some pretty amazing looks at birds we've seen before.

Wedding Bells for George "Sulu" Takei

Per Reuters:

Actor George Takei, best known for playing Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek," says he plans to wed his longtime partner now that the California Supreme Court has overturned a state ban on gay marriage.

Takei, 71, told Reuters on Monday that he and Brad Altman, his 54-year-old business manager, are going through the "delicious process" of planning their nuptials.

(h/t Meteor Blades)

This is really nice to hear. Takei's been out for an awfully long time, but he's also incredibly outspoken on gay rights, on human rights (he was interned with his family during WWII) without ever being hostile or bitter. He's a tremendous spokesman and I have a great deal of admiration for him. I can't find the archive of the audio for this, but on coming out day (October 11), I think in 2006, he gave an amazing interview to David Bender on Air America radio in which he discussed the experience of being interned and still spoke of everything with an incredible sense of optimism and hope.

He is also, by the way, *incredibly* funny:

Julie Waters e-notes: Tue, May 20, 2008

Hey all; sorry I've not been posting much as of late. Things have been a little crazy.

I'll start with the sales pitch: I've now fully entered the world of digital distribution. All my CDs are now available online, via amazon.com, iTunes CD Baby and soon Rhapsody will have all of my music as well.

I've done a major revamp of the music site, so if you're interested, check it out (http://juliewaters.com/home.php). It includes links for online sales.

I've been composing up a storm and am currently trying to find time to get a new CD out by the end of Summer (I make no promises). This will, if things work as planned, be a duet CD, a mixture of blues, contemporary & jazz, working with all three of my primary instruments (6-string banjo, acoustic guitar and baritone guitar) at various times.

The music we're doing so far has real potential. It's a lot of fun to do stuff with other musicians again. After so much energy spent on solo work, it's nice to have someone else to share the burden a little.

Photography, by the way, is going amazingly well. Check out the photo site to see some of what I've been up to.

Hope everyone is well. I'll post more, but not today.
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More info:

http://juliewaters.com/

Julie's photography:

http://juliesmagiclightshow.com/
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Upcoming events for Julie Waters
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Wednesday, June 18th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Wednesday, July 9th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

Sunday, August 10th 2nd Sundays Song Circle (tentative) at RAMP Gallery; Bellows Falls, VT

I did clinic defense for three years

Clinic defense: it's getting up very early on Friday and Saturday mornings and driving to a clinic which performs abortions in order to help the women who are coming to them from medical care get into the clinic without having to deal with the harassment of anti-abortion protesters.

It's challenging work. It requires you learn to focus on the clients and not react personally to *anything* the protesters say to you (gay-baiting, race-baiting, threats on your person, etc.).

When you do clinic defense, you don't even refer to one another by name where it can be overheard because if they have your name, they make the attacks much more personal.

It was difficult work, but it was well worth it. It taught me a lot about myself, about responding to personal attacks, and it taught me a bit about courage, too.

The job itself was simple: when someone pulls into the parking lot, do your best to help them into the clinic and distract them from the protesters to ease their way in.

Sometimes, the protesters would play games, like having one of their people pull up and then drive away as they convince the person not to have an abortion. Like we don't recognize their cars that are parked along the road every week and don't recognize the drivers in them as well? But, I digress...

I'm talking about this because despite my occasional differences with NARAL (I'm not fond of groups which endorse incumbents over challengers just because the incumbents have acceptable voting records, even if the incumbent can do a lot better, so I've clashed with NARAL a few times over this), I think they're a good organization that does good work.

So, if you're angry about their endorsement, please be sure to let them know what your preference would have been, and if you're happy about it, let them know that, too.

But whatever you may think about their decision, NARAL is no traitor and if it weren't for them, some of these clinics I volunteered at wouldn't even exist today. They've been a major force supporting abortion rights for decades and they deserve some respect for that.

I'm going to close this with two quick stories:

The women who owned the clinic I volunteered at developed a brain tumor which eventually killed her. While she was still alive, one of the protesters found out about the illness and they started mocking her for it.

They would shout to her, telling her that this was God's punishment for her sins.

These are the people who should be our common enemy here.

Once, one of the protesters herself came to the clinic to get an abortion. She asked for special permission to come around through the back entrance so her friends protesting outside wouldn't see her.

The clinic complied.

We didn't challenge her on this. That would have been unacceptable. She had every right to get an abortion and she had every right to protest. The contradiction between the two was her issue to deal with, and it wasn't our place to make her feel terrible for it.

The next week, she was out there protesting again.

We never said a thing.

Rutland (VT) Herald on Bird Populations

There's a headline from today's Rutland Herald which reads "Vermont's bird population has increased by 17 new species, new survey shows."

This sounds like a good thing, but when you read the article itself, the prognosis isn't so good. Some choice excerpts:

A new survey of Vermont's bird populations shows that the state has breeding populations of 17 more species than it did in the late 1970s, but it also raises concern about the future of some species.

• The eastern meadowlark was spotted in half as many places in Vermont as it was 30 years ago.



• The common nighthawk has all but disappeared.



• Breeding pairs of four kinds of northern warblers weren't found anywhere. Vermont's first breeding bird survey helped establish the state's list of threatened and endangered birds, according to ornithologist Sally Laughlin, of Cambridge, director of the first atlas and a member of the state Endangered Species Committee.

After the loon, peregrine and osprey were put on the list, the state developed programs to protect them to the point where all three now have healthy breeding populations.

These are major issues. When bird populations decline dramatically, it's generally a sign of major environmental changes. When the Rusty Blackbird declines by 98% (see the photo: I couldn't find this bird in Vermont; I had to go to New Mexico to get a photo of one), it's a sign that things are changing.

So, yes, we have more breeding species in Vermont. These include the Tufted Titmouse and Northern Cardinal, both of which used to be uncommon in the Northeast. They're beautiful birds, and I'm glad I have the chance to view them, but it scares me that they climate here has changed to the point where birds that used to live a bit further south have become so prevalent in Vermont.

Friday Bird Blogging: Eastern Bluebirds Return in Force to Vermont

Last year, I had a few brief sightings of eastern bluebirds, but they were few and far between and I only spotted them a few times. This time, I've had multiple sightings of them. While last year, several of my sightings were directly connected with nesting boxes, this time, the sightings have been frequent and in areas with no visible nest boxes throughout the region.

I'm still relatively new to birding, so I find it difficult to know how much of this is my eye changing over time and being better at spotting (combined with having much better camera equipment than I had two years ago), and how much of it is a change in the environment or conditions from this year compared to last.

Cornell has some interesting facts on Eastern Bluebirds:

The male Eastern Bluebird does a "Nest Demonstration Display" at the nest cavity to attract the female. He brings nest material to the hole, goes in and out, and waves his wings while perched above it. That is pretty much his contribution to nest building; only the female Eastern Bluebird builds the nest and incubates the eggs.

Eastern Bluebirds typically have more than one successful brood each year. See a Birdscope article for data from The Birdhouse Network that show this graphically. Young produced in early nests usually leave their parents in summer, but young from later nests frequently stay with their parents over the winter.

Eastern Blue birds are, by the way, quite a bit different from Western Bluebirds, which tend to have a very similar shape, but the males have a darker throat and the females and less contrast on the chest and throat.

Friday Saturday Blog Birding: the Bohemian Waxwing

I'd never seen a bohemian waxwing before, but we'd been looking for them all winter: scanning flocks of waxwings, examining details, etc. Today, we were in search of a greater white-fronted goose, and had no luck whatsoever. On the drive, however, we spotted a flock of waxwings and decided to take a closer look. The entire flock was bohemians, which can be distinguished from cedar waxwings by rusty marks on the tail and forehead, a grayer underside (cedars have a lot more yellow on the stomach) and a distinctly different wing pattern.

Some key facts from Cornell:

• The name "Bohemian" refers to the nomadic movements of winter flocks. It comes from the inhabitants of Bohemia, meaning those that live an unconventional lifestyle or like that of gypsies.



• The Bohemian Waxwing does not hold breeding territories, probably because the fruits it eats are abundant, but available only for short periods. One consequence of this non-territorial lifestyle is that it has no true song. It does not need one to defend a territory.



• Only three species of waxwings exist. The Bohemian and Japanese waxwings have white edges to the wing feathers, but the Cedar Waxwing does not. An unusual Cedar Waxwing was found with the ornate wing pattern, suggesting that the ancestor of all three species had a patterned wing.

More Light Drawings

As usual, clicking on these brings you to larger versions:

The Pileated Woodpecker: a giant among woodpeckers

Crossposted to Birding New England

The first time I ever saw a Pileated woodpecker, it was a breathtaking sight. The pair of them were feeding in the large maple in our yard and when they flew off, they were nearly silent.

It took me a few years before I managed to actually capture them in photo, but I'm glad I was able to pull it off. Since then, I've managed to get photos of them with limited success.

I think, though, that my favorite thing about the Pileateds is their range of sounds. They have a fairly standard woodpecker "laugh" (which I think of as more of a high-pitched rattle), but unlike the hairy and the downy woodpeckers, their call is a trill which remains constant in pitch. While the Hairy Woodpecker makes a call that you can hear trilling and then trailing off, changing pitch at the end, the Pileated's is constant throughout, making them easy to hear from a distance if you get the knack for it.

Then there's another call they make which is more like a staccato slow chatter that is such a *deep* pitch that it rattles the bones a bit.

I'm going to close with one more photo at the end. When Pileated's dig into trees, they do major excavating, creating huge holes in the trees, digging out large chunks of wood. The photo below is of a pileated in mid-excavation, with the actual piece of wood still in its beak:



As usual, all these photos are smaller versions. Clicking on them brings you to the site with the full sized versions and more details.

More Light Drawings

As usual, clicking on the photos gets you to larger versions

Friday Bird Blogging: the Bushtit

The Bushtit is a Western Bird that we spotted while staying in New Mexico a few weeks ago. Cornell reports the Bushtit as being one of the birds that adapts well to changing landscapes, having learned to adapt to suburbs in the state of increasing its range.

Like many birds its size (3-4"), this is not the easiest bird in the world to photograph, but having a small flock of them feed in a tree in a populated area meant a bird which was used to people, which made my job a lot easier.

Friday Bird Blogging: Sandhill Crane taking flight

A Sandhill Crane taking flight at Bosque Del Apache from our trip to New Mexico.

I'd never seen sandhill cranes before, though there is a pair that shows up in Vermont from time to time, so this was an incredible treat. You could pretty much consistently see them in flight in and around the refuge the whole time we were there.

As usual, clicking on the image gives you a larger version with details.

Friday Monday Bird Blogging: Snow Geese at Bosque Del Apache

I just posted 85 new photos from our trip to New Mexico. These are mostly bird photos, but there are a couple bits of landscape and architecture photos in there as well.

The trip was unreal; I've never been any place like this before. I love the refuges we've got on the Northeast but many of them are coastal or forest refuges so we don't get to see birds in wide open spaces like this.

Each morning we were able to watch snow geese take off from the central pond in Bosque Del Apache wildlife refuge. I tried a few different ways of capturing the brilliance of this event, but none of these really did it justice. Most of the time it started at daybreak; you can hear the snow geese and the sandhill cranes making lots of noise in the middle of the pond, and you can watch them from the deck with the sun rising to the left.

The noise builds for a time, and you can hear other geese coming in from the distance. Then, suddenly, there is this noise, that I can't even begin to describe; at first it was just a really loud collection of the geese honking back and forth, like this sort of strange loud chatter. Then it all just *stops* at once for a moment. Then there is this bursting forth of noise from the center of the lake and this incredible lift-off. Then hundreds of geese just fly forth across the pond, flying directly overhead. You can hear the beating of wings and the volume is just incredibly intense.

I did a variety of approaches to try to capture this, but not with the best success. I just don't think there's a way to capture it that comes anywhere near the experience.

I've mentioned "life lists" before. I had hoped to get 5-10 new birds on my list, which for me is a list of all the types of bird I've photographed. I got at least 27 new birds during the trip, some of which were birds I'd never even heard of before. I also got some great photographs of birds that I'd already pictured, such as Northern Shovelers, Snow Geese, Northern Harriers, Pintails, a Kestrel and lots more.

The trip was not without its complications. We drove up to the peak of Sandia Crest to get a trio of finches (Rosy Finches) which are almost never found outside of high mountain terrain. We'd never been up that high before (it was over 10,600 ft high) and though I did manage to get some amazing photos, I got serious vertigo while up there (I made the mistake of moving too fast walking up a hill: the thin air made that a real problem and I almost fell over at one point).

The trip home was a bit of a nightmare. We had a stopover in Chicago that took an extra four hours due to bad weather. So we were stuck in the airport, didn't make it into CT until 3:30am, then had to pick up the car and rive home. By 6:30am, we were finally home, and today it's been land of the zombie people. Hopefully a (full) night's sleep tonight will get us back up and recharged again. It was a great trip, but now I'm totally wiped out.
Tomorrow, it's back to real work, but in the meantime here's a quick list of what I've got photos of:

Northern Harriers
Snow Geese
Ross's Geese
Neotropic Cormorant
Bushtit
Black-Throated Sparrow
Mountain Chickadee
Brewer's Blackbird
Black Rosy-Finch
Brown-Capped Rosy-Finch
Gray-Crowned Rosy-Finch
Steller's Jay
Western Scrub-Jay
Ladder-Backed Woodpecker
Black Phoebe
Say's Phoebe
Western Bluebird
Northern Flicker
Phainopepla
Loggerhead Shrike
Western Meadowlark
Rusty Blackbird
Spotted Towhee
Chihuahuan Raven
Pyrrhuloxia
Sandhill Crane
Gambel’S Quail
Greater Roadrunner
Ring-Necked Pheasant
American Bald Eagle
Red-Tailed Hawk
Northern Shoveler

I also have a few landscape photos as well as a really nice picture of an old Church with lovely architecture and colors.

This was a real treat. I'm glad we did it, even if I may need a few days to recover :)

Why do they hate John so much?

One theory as to why.

Last Night's Photos

Three more light drawings. As usual, clicking on the photos gives you larger versions with details about the shot.

A light sphere:



This was a mistake that I ended up liking:



A very bright light tunnel:

Heath Ledger, dead at 28

Ledger was a gifted actor and his role in Brokeback Mountain was just one of the most moving things I've ever seen.

I don't get into celebrity worship culture, but I do feel a personal affinity for people who have done something I think of as a social good. Brokeback Mountain, and especially his part in it, was a major social good, as far as I'm concerned. It transformed the points of view of people across the country and put a human face to gay men that had been sorely lacking in mainstream movies, which often depicted gay men as either social eunichs or flamboyantly over the top. There's nothing wrong with either of those as part of the spectrum of the behavior of gay men overall, but as primary roles in mainstream movies, it's a bit thin.

Ledger, along with his director and costars, managed to bring human faces to the plight of those of us who live under the threat of violence for the nature of our very beings. For the loss of someone so willing to give of himself to play such a part, I'm going to miss his work dearly.

Friday Bird Blogging: Barred Owl

It's never easy to spot these guys. This shot in particular was great because the bird eluded me multiple times before I finally got it in sight.

Tonight's photos

Two new light drawings, this time playing with combination of more than one light object in the same shot. As usual, clicking on the image gives you a larger version with more details. The second one was an exposure of over ten minutes. I did one pass on the left (very slowly), then turned around and came back doing the same thing on the right. Then, walking away from the camera, I did the star shapes overhead.

All the lights are attached to an old mop stick, so I can extend my reach, which also allows me to create fairly uniform arcs and sphere shapes.

Vermonters invade New Hampshire to support John Edwards

This is primarily a photo blog: a group of Vermonters (including a not paltry contingent from Vermont's Green Mountain Daily) showed up in Lebanon, New Hampshire this morning to help out with the canvassing. Later, we got to see John Edwards speak, and had a real treat shortly after.

It was a day much colder than expected, and canvassing was fun. Everyone was incredibly polite to one another. We crossed a few paths with an Obama canvasser and wished each other good luck. Everyone we spoke to while canvassing was polite as well, and the common theme, even for people who weren't supporting Edwards was how nice it was to have a *good* set of choices this time around.

Below, I'll post about the speakers we had at the pre-canvassing as well as the treat we got with seeing Edwards, but first, probably one of the best portrait shots I've ever taken:



The whole photoset of photos from today can be seen here. I'm just posting a select few for the blog itself.

First, David Zucker, who was coordinating the volunteers in Lebanon:



People who do this sort of work are often overworked and overtired, but he was great.

After David, we got a cool speech from Matt Dunne, who ran for Lt. Governor in Vermont last time around and is an awesome progressive:



After Matt, we got Kevin Leahy (son of the senator Patrick Leahy), which was a treat:



Then, we got the fairly manic Ben Cohen (from Ben & Jerry's fame):



The idea was simple after this: we canvass for a bit and then we had reserved seats in the auditorium in front.

Here's what ended up happening though: the Fire Marshal shut us, and a large number of other Edwards supporters, out of the auditorium. So this was really disheartening; we had expected to have reserved seats, but no such luck. They were going to have us stand outside and meet with Edwards briefly but no one seemed to like that plan. Then they figured out that we could have an overflow room, and that as a thank you, we'd get to see Edwards speak briefly in the overflow room. They brought us in, we waited a bit, and then the candidate appeared, walking into the center of this gymnasium and standing on a chair to talk to us:







He spoke briefly, off the cuff, thanked everyone for coming and apologized for the overflow room, and then left again. I positioned myself to get the picture up top on his way out-- came out far better than I expected. We were all milling about, getting ready to head out, thinking it wasn't worth sticking around just to hear his speech pumped in through speakers.

Then something really surprising happened. He came running back into the room, without his jacket, and someone tossed him a basketball:

This was a real treat. We got to watch a presidential candidate just hang out before his speech, and have some fun, the afternoon before probably the most important debate of his political career:









He didn't seem to mind that he'd missed a few baskets, and he was as relaxed as I'd ever seen him.

So really, that's it. We headed back to quiet Vermont and over the next few days we'll be doing more campaigning, canvassing, etc. This was a real treat. I've worked for campaigns before but never got to see the candidate from this close.

I'm glad we did it and it was really fun, once you got over the bitter freezing ("Can I still feel my fingers? No, I can't!) cold. Yikes. Oh well. All for a good cause.

Friday Bird Blogging: Yellow Bellied Sapsucker

No time to write much of anything, but I'd never seen a sapsucker in the winter before December's Christmas Bird Count. Apparently, Sapsuckers do winter over some of the time, but it's not common. Per Cornell:

The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is the only woodpecker in eastern North America that is completely migratory. Although a few individuals remain throughout much of the winter in the southern part of the breeding range, most head farther south, going as far south as Panama. Females tend to migrate farther south than do males.

As usual, clicking on the image brings you to a larger version.