We had our Christmas Bird Count yesterday. It was, shall we say, kind of pathetic. A major storm came in Friday afternoon: I had to drive home just as the storm was getting bad, so a ride that's normally 35-40 minutes took me approximately an hour and twenty-five. The worst parts were the beginning and end of the drive. Most of the way back I was fine (though one moron passed me on the right!) but there's this small hill that gets me to my house; a plow was ahead of me so I thought "cool, it will be perfectly plowed" except the plow was going so slow that I lost momentum going up the hill and ended up swerving back and forth a little, which was a bit scary.
But anyway... I'd dealt with this snow Friday big-time and yesterday I learned a bit about my emotional and physical limitations: I'm mostly recovered from the surgery I had a couple weeks ago, but I've been so low on activity lately that it's hard for me to get back into the swing of things.
So I actually fell asleep during the bird count (I was in the back seat), and ended up being dropped off back at home to check out feeder birds at the house. Feeder birds, were, of course, the best birds of the day. This black-capped chickadee was hanging out in the yard.
I didn't get one of these Carolina Wrens, but someone down the road from us did. This one's a photo I took a couple years ago:
What I did manage to get was a bunch of these:
Mind you, if the count had been a week earlier, I would have had over a hundred of these Pine Siskins. They were all over the damned place. Usually we get one or two in a year, and I'll spot them among the American Goldfinches. Not so much this year. A month and a half ago, I saw one and said "wow. There's a Pine Siskin mixed in with the Goldfinches. I should try to get a photo of it." Then a day or two later, I went to see if it was still around. The entire feed was filled with Siskins, with a single golfinch among them. I think the ratio of Siskins to Goldfinches came out to be about 20-1, with over 100 Siskins and just 4-5 Goldfinches.
We tried to track down one of these Barred Owls:
I don't think any of the teams in our area found one, but one group got a pair of Great Horned Owls, which I've seen very rarely and never around here.
No signs of Snowy Owls, either:
That was from Parker River Wildlife Refuge a few weeks back.
The water had all iced over, so our usual waterfowl was in very low numbers. We tried to find one of these Snow Geese:
But had no luck at all. (That photo's from New Mexico)
With the exception of a single Bald Eagle that soared overhead (no photo: it moved too quickly and/or I was too slow), we didn't see much of anything that we don't see on any winter's day, and even the Siskins were in significantly lower numbers than the previous days. So, instead, I'm going to present a few photos of birds we didn't see, birds we never would have seen on Christmas Bird Count and just plain birds I like:
This is a Chihuauan Raven:
It's a lot like our Common Ravens, but this Southwestern variety is a more crow-sized and its croak is a little more nasal, making it difficult to distinguish from American Crows if you're not familiar with it.
These are both Palm Warblers:
They are common in New England during Migration periods, but otherwise scarce. I've never seen one this late in the year, and rarely see them outside of late April/Early May.
This lovely creature is a Belted Kingfisher:
They can be seen any time of year, provided there's open water, and though we did have some open water, no one spotted a Kingfisher this year. Last year, one of our teams got one along the river, but not this time.
This Eastern Kingbird, on the other hand (photographed in the middle of swallowing a fly):
Is an insectivore. You don't find them where there aren't bugs, so they migrate with the insect population. I don't think I've seen one of these (or any other flycatcher) since September.
We did spot a few house finches. This photo was taken in Sumemrtime, but finches can remain year-round and some do:
Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds, of course, are long gone:
Green Herons have been gone for months:
Great Blue Herons sometimes stick around through early December, but I've never seen one here this late:
Sandhill Cranes pop up in Vermont from time to time, but never at this time of year. This one's from New Mexico in January:
And this Cattle Egret is a rarity no matter what time of year it is. This one was photographed in November of 2007, the first and only time I've ever seen one:
So in the meantime, I've been thinking about health care and an aspect we rarely discuss: recovery time. I knew that there would be a week or so after my surgery of basic immobility. It didn't occur to me that even though I feel a lot better, I'd be so damned tired for so long. There are no actual medical limitations on what I can and can not do at this point (aside from the usual things related to diabetes. I.e., don't eat lots of sugar), but I feel very limited just by having been rendered inactive for several months.
We very much need universal health care as a means by which to prevent people from having to spend much of their life ill, but I hadn't realized how much more valuable the preventative aspect would be.
The tool poor health takes on people is tremendous: it decreases the ability to function day to day, but once the illness is functionally over doesn't mean the treatment is over. The cost of recovery is really hitting me in a major way. I had a job interview on Friday. If I get offered this job, I'll be thrilled, but I'm also be thrilled to know that they can't hire me right away, that they're not expecting anyone to start the work until the middle of January. Normally I'd want to start right away, in order to get back into a decent income as quickly as possible, but right now I'm thinking, I really need another week or two just to get used to interacting with people again, to being accountable to something for a whole day. Right now, I don't think I have more than four good hours in me in a day. That's going to change soon enough, but it's a real problem.
People in the work-force full-time who have dealt with serious illness (or, hell, even just pregnancy) are often pushed to get back into the work force as quickly as they are able. This doesn't solve anything. If anything, it makes things worse. Decreased recovery time can do real damage to the person recovering and we, as a society, seem to treat that recovery time as a luxury, and not a mandate.
So, anyway, after that horrible snow-storm Friday, we've got another one coming to Vermont (and the rest of New England) today. It's pretty fluffy out there right now, and I'm thinking, today's a really good day to do not much of anything meaningful, important or difficult.
I will read some, write some, probably go out and take pictures of the snow at some point, possibly watch a movie, and possibly do some web design (because I'm a geek and that's fun for me and want to create a simple slideshow system for my photo site).
So today is officially "lazy day," though later I am certain there will be shoveling.
UPDATE: I made a little slide show function for the website so if you want to see all my Christmas Bird Count photos as a rotating slide show, you can do it here
LAZY DAY UPDATE:
Today in Vermont can be summarized quite well by this photo:
Our forecast for tonight reads:
Moderate to heavy snow will continue to fall across... southern Vermont...before tapering off from west to east... Snowfall rates of one inch per hour will be likely...with additional snow accumulation up to two inches in some spots through 8 PM. The snow will also reduce the visibility to less than one quarter mile at times.
I went out briefly this afternoon to take photos of birds. All our Pine Siskins apparently decided to come back today, as there were once again huge numbers at the feeders. Here's one that was waiting as part of the queue:
(it's a smaller image: clicking on it gets you to the larger one).
There will be a lot of shoveling tomorrow morning.