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yellow-legged gull in Hyannis, MA, err.... a gull with yellow legs

2012-02-24T16:39:00.000-05:00

Anna and I zoomed up to Hyannis today in the horrendous weather this AM to try and see this Gull in Veterans Park on the west side of town. The weather still sucked when we got there, but the gull in question was easily found right away, hanging out with some Herring Gulls and a Ring-billed Gull. They were quite cooperative, as they seemed to be accustomed to people feeding them. They would get closer when we rolled the windows down, but that meant the nasty sleet would blow right into the car.

So, I was really hoping that this would turn out to be an easy Yellow-legged Gull, a species which normally hangs out in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Upon further inspection though, it isn't quite that easy. This bird's head is darker, and the streaks that run from the nape into the face extend down and into the breast. The mantle color seems right, but the bill to me seemed smaller than nearby Herring Gulls, which should be the other way around. The spot on the Gonys to me looked like the right size and color red, and the leg coloration seems to be right. The biggest plumage character for me that indicates that it might not be a pure Yellow-legged Gull is that it has a darker sub-terminal band on the underside of the secondaries, though I am no Gull expert and have never seen Yellow-legged Gull before.

Having said all of that, this was formally considered a subspecies of Herring Gull, and as we know, Herring Gulls can exhibit a wide array of plumage characters. Herring Gulls hybridize with Lesser Black-backed Gulls which seems to be a likely candidate for this bird given the dark sub-terminal band on the secondaries. This is a character that LBBG exhibits. Anyway, it was a fun morning, and a good gull to study, I just wish the weather had been nicer.

The Gull in the back with a nice crisp breeding plumaged Herring Gull in front for comparison.

The gull in flight, through the rain covered windshield showing the darker sub-terminal band on the underside of the secondaries.

Walking through the parking lot.

AWA Birdathon Follow Up

2012-02-05T16:54:00.000-05:00

Well, Thursday turned out to be an amazing day, both for weather and for birds. Lucky for me, my team mate Anna Hallstrom has an amazing amount of patience and ability to forgive as our well laid plans of haranguing around the state in search of birds such as Snowy Owl, American Bittern and Great Egret were traded for my realization that I had the return ferry time wrong, and as we got a coffee at Mable's cafe the horn blew and we watched the ferry pull away and our plans crumbled to the ground.

We went back into Mable's and got some breakfast resigned to the fact that the next ferry didn't return to the mainland until 2:30 PM, so there was no way to see a lot of the birds we had planned on. As we ate, we got swept up in some of the small island cafe chatter, and the topic of birds soon came up as our scope leaned against the building near the door, identifying us as birders. This was great, as we heard talk of the giant Arctic Snow Owls that had been seen this winter, and then got some great advice as to how to spend our time best on the island seeing as many species as possible, on foot.

Block Island has only some 900 year round residents, so it kind of feels a little easier to chase a flock of birds into someone's back yard, especially when all of the shades are drawn. In one such place we saw the majority of our terrestrial species, including a singing Rusty Blackbird. We had a really nice flyover of an adult Red-shouldered Hawk by the airport, but failed to see a few of the island's potential specialties. One of the most fun occurrences happened as I watched a crow overhead, and Anna saw a male Ring-necked Pheasant cruise across our path. I had gone all of 2011 without seeing a Pheasant, so I was a little jealous, but we decided we could count it for the birdathon anyway. A little while later we heard a few vocalizing behind the town hall, so I felt a little better about my 2012 year list!

As we sat along the bluffs drinking a lunchtime beer we ran into a couple of guys who had been metal detecting along the shore. They had found a "half a tweezer" and a Connecticut quarter, which they handed over for inspection. They were pretty excited about their discoveries, and the encounter was kind of a fun juxtaposition against the oddity of collecting bird sightings that is the act of birding.

The ferry home proved a success even though it was a brisk ride as we travelled straight into the steady NW wind. The seas had picked up since the morning, and it was kind of nasty. Anna, as she went to the bathroom for a second joked about not seeing anything while she was inside, and wouldn't you know it we had an amazing look at a Common Murre right next to the boat. As it lifted off the water we could see that it was transitioning into alternate plumage. A little after that we had 3 more Common Murres in flight, and it was nice to have just seen one so close to have a good calibration of the plumage coloration opposed to the darker black Razorbills also in the area.

Once back on land we hurried to the car and got going again, along the southern coast of RI. We made a couple of forays down the beach roads as we headed west toward Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge. We picked up Wild Turkey, a second Red-shouldered Hawk and a Cooper's Hawk before arriving at Trustom to zoom out the trail in the fading light. There had been a number of species of waterfowl on the pond reported earlier in the week, including Barrow's Goldeney just the night before. As dusk overwhelmed us we worked over the silhouetted ducks on the pond picking up a few species here and there, and as we hit the field at 17:15 there were 3 American Woodcocks displaying. It was a great way to end the day to hear their peenting and falling twittering, which to me reversed Punxatawney Phil's forecast of a delayed spring. After all was said and done, we ended up with 65 species, which will seem pitiful compared to some of the other participating team's totals, but what can you do, we're not in Mexico!

Full list of Species Seen:

1. Canada Goose 6, 36, 68 = 110
2. Gadwall 8
3. American Wigeon 3
4. American Black Duck 4, 25, 32 = 61
5. Mallard 26, 16 = 42
6. Common Eider 55, 36, 30 =121
7. Surf Scoter 2, 6 =8
8. White-winged Scoter 10
9. Black Scoter 20, 22 scoter sp. 20,8 = 28
10. Long-tailed Duck 4
11. Ring-necked Duck 8
12. Greater Scaup 900 Greater/Lesser Scaup 75
13. Bufflehead 14, 16 = 30
14. Common Goldeneye 10, 2, 37, 6 = 55
15. Red-breasted Merganser 12, 12, 28, 6 = 58
16. Ring-necked Pheasant 3
17. Wild Turkey 9
18. Red-throated Loon 1
19. Common Loon 25, 7, 9 = 41
20. Horned Grebe 1
21. Northern Gannet 55, 45, 175 = 275
22. Double-crested Cormorant 2, 3 = 5
23. Great Cormorant 8, 22, 18 = 40
24. Ruddy Duck 75
25. Great Blue Heron 2, 2 = 4
26. Cooper's Hawk 1 seen on Moonstone Beach Rd
27. Red-shouldered Hawk 1 Seen by airport, adult, 1 Camp Fuller Rd.
28. Northern Harrier 3
29. American Coot 30
30. Purple Sandpiper 4, 7 = 11
31. American Woodcock 3 Displaying at Trustom Pond
32. Black-legged Kittiwake 8, 13 = 21
33. Ring-billed Gull 20, 6, 18 = 44
34. Herring Gull 45, 65, 55, 15 = 180
35. Great Black-backed Gull 20, 35, 32, 6 = 93 gull sp. 150
36. Common Murre 4 one on the water, 3 inflight, Identified by their plumage coloration
37. Razorbill 1, 3 = 4 large alcid sp. 6, 5
38. Great-horned Owl 1
39. Short-eared Owl 1 at Trustom Wildlife Refuge
40. Rock Pigeon 5
41. Mourning Dove 4
42. Belted Kingfisher 2, 1 = 3
43. Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
44. Downy Woodpecker 3, 1 = 4
45. Northern Flicker 2
46. Blue Jay 3
47. American Crow 24
48. Fish Crow 18
49. Black-capped Chickadee 7, 6 = 13
50. White-breasted Nuthatch 1
51. Carolina Wren 12, 2 = 14
52. American Robin 6
53. Northern Mockingbird 2
54. European Starling 35
55. Yellow-rumped Warbler 3 warbler sp. 1
56. Song Sparrow 11, 2 = 13
57. White-throated Sparrow 4
58. Dark-eyed Junco 7
59. Northern Cardinal 12, 3 = 15
60. Red-winged Blackbird 2
61. Rusty Blackbird 1
62. Common Grackle 1
63. House Finch 8, 2 = 10
64. American Goldfinch 2
65. House Sparrow 45

Support My Big Birding Day to help the Alamos Wildlands Alliance!!

2012-01-31T10:06:00.000-05:00

This Thursday my team, "the Hawkeyes" will be participating in a BIG DAY! What this means is that Anna Hallstrom and I will spend 24 hours trying to see or hear as many bird species as possible. We are doing this to get sponsors to raise money for a very cool and very important field station in Sonora, Mexico, the Navopatia Field Station of the Alamos Wildlands Alliance. The field station exists in a very unique desert/cactus habitat along the eastern shores of the Sea of Cortez. Every year, more and more of this habitat has been ripped up since NAFTA to farm your squash and tomatoes. Of course we like those veggies, but the markets that drive it, and the economy that makes it happen is not sustainable and the long term future of this enterprise is dim, yet the habitat is not recoverable. MANY of our nation's songbirds use this habitat to winter over and many more use it to fatten up during the boom monsoon seasons during migration.
This year, the Hawkeyes are putting a new twist to the Big Day! We are calling it a fifty / fifty challenge. That is, you sponsor us, and if we don't see fifty species, we will donate your pledge to the Alamos Wildlands Alliance out of our pockets! If we do see fifty species, you're on the hook for your donation, plus fifty cents for every bird species over 50! Get it? This is significant because in Rhode Island in February, it's not all that easy to see fifty species in a day, and the max that we could pretty much ever hope to see is about 70. So either way, we won't be breaking the bank, but it'll be fun either way!!
A fun way to help an awesome cause and some amazing people doing research on critical issues around the songbirds that call Sonora home. To read more about AWA's research and field station please click here!
To Donate to our team, the HAWKEYES click here
Also, I'll be tweeting throughout the day about our adventure. Follow me here.

Some Older Thoughts on Life

2011-11-01T08:40:00.000-04:00

Because I'm lazy and a little busy, I'm re-posting a blog that I wrote on August, 3rd, 2009, three weeks after tearing my achilles. It's a little long, but there are some interesting ideas in there that are pretty poignant in terms of our national economic state and the Occupy Movement

Before this whole injury thing happened, I had been synthesizing an idea, a statement, a way to explain my lifestyle in terms of retirement, health insurance and standard of living. Maybe I was just trying to come to terms with the hand I’m playing, but I’ve been picking all of my own cards for some time now. I don’t think that the ideas involved are fully matured yet, but the irony of my current situation and what I wanted to write about forces me to try and deal with it now.

A lot of people that I respect greatly caution me all of the time, that when I’m 50, 60 or 75 I’m going to regret not having led a more normal life and paid into some system in the hopes of receiving some benefits other than my social security blanket. Artists, surfers, teachers all alike have warned me, in fact I only know of one friend off of the top of my head that whole heartedly endorses how I live, granted, most people I know never contemplate what I do, they are just my friends. What is funny is that at the same time, I get the standard, “that’s great, do it while you can” encouragement, about my travelling and general tendency to wander and maybe not work as much as a good American should. I reply, ”while I can?? When would I not be able to do this?”

Central to my ethos, (for it is a planned existence, and not just the life I’ve fallen in to, is the fact that because we are born in this country, and because this is the greatest democracy in the world does not mean that I have to agree with that system, and it also does not mean that I have to offer you a better system in return. I believe that we are far beyond systems of management and government that can ENSURE equality and fairness to all people while maintaining a peaceful existence on this planet, unless that system is simply LOVE. Democracy will not save anyone. Never mind the fact that the U.S. is NOT a democracy, but a republic. That said, I’ve known since I was a young adult that I don’t agree with hardly anything that our government does, or at all with how 99% of people live their lives, and are more or less forced to live their lives by this cave allegory that has been written by corporate puppeteers, and constantly re-written to keep people just on the edge of survival and consumption, so that the most we, as Americans can hope for is a vacation to Cancun and some digital pictures to share at the office, never to know the possibilities that exist just outside of our prescribed boxed life. I know, I am over simplifying, but this is a blaahhgg, not a book.

So, for me, rejecting this type of a consumer based society, veiled by a patriotic fervor and guise of freedom has always meant that I must find different ways to exist in this realm. I accept that I have been very much shaped by late 20th century ideas, ideals, recreations, and pop culture. I am not saying that I want to disappear into the woods, or burn T.V.s, or blow up corporate officers. What I’m saying is that I want to leave the cave, and forge an existence that I know is there, and I want to inspire people to do the same. What I really want, is to live in a community where friendship and love is valued more than anything else, and I want to be loved and nurtured in that environment, and raise a family and enjoy all that this bountiful world has to offer. Kind of a bummer that I also believe that birthing and raising a child in this world does not make sense due to the current situation, thank you everyone who has ever given birth to more than your share of children, you took mine. Didn’t realize this was a rant too. Oh well. So the conclusion of this paragraph will read; Living as a normal American for me, not agreeing with the current situation of the world, our environment, our government would be like fucking for virginity or bombing for peace. You cannot simultaneously oppose a system and support it with your taxes and life without great emotional consequence. Unfortunately, you cannot also live simultaneously in the United States and oppose our government without going to jail and forfeiting your freedom, ‘cuz everybody knows freedom ain’t free. In fact, what freedom costs is one hundred years of isolating impoverished people throughout the world, subverting governments and opposition factions throughout the world, economically enslaving people in nations who never knew what a job was until their food sources all of a sudden cost money, exporting hatred, guns missiles, and munitions to the four corners of this spinning, wondrous and verdant globe. That’s what it costs, and you know what else it costs, your neighbor Jimmy’s leg, and 5,000 innocent collateral damages, all so we can watch the NFL, drink dirty martinis, and vote for the best of two fucking assholes. I don’t mean to point fingers. I own a 2006 Toyota, have $47,000 in debt to 7 or 8 creditors and drank 2 Olympia beers last night. I just want to work through this so we might make it a little better.

What does this have to do with the first paragraph about retirement, social security, standard of living, etc.?? Well, to many, I think the term “standard of living” is often at the heart of what they believe is truly the best course for their life. They believe working a 9-5 and paying into the system and retiring at 65 will be the way to optimize their standard of living, and get the most out of this life, until, ahhhhh....., at long last, heaven. Most people I think engage this idea regularly, and even contemplate their standard of living in terms of the rest of the world. The problem is that the examples of the rest of the world come in Sally Struthers commercials, the Headline news and photos of be-headed Mexican drug lords on the side of the road. Standard of living and Quality of life should be measured by number of smiles per unit area, and I guarantee you the US, as well as many other first world nations would fall to the bottom of the list. Even as it is, with normal indices like literacy rate, infant mortality rate, work/recreation rate, the United States is ranked very low on the list, even when compared to 3rd world countries. Costa Rica, for example ranks higher in every area, except for unemployment. Fewer people work, but more people are happier and healthier.

So, really, for me, the heart of the matter is that we are Homo sapiens sapiens, in the family hominidae, order primate, class mammalia and phylum chordata. To me, this means that we are essentially animals. Yes, we reason. We love. We do all sorts of things that have not been illustrated in much of the other occupants of the animal kingdom, including kill for nothing but an idea or thought, yet our similarities are far more numerous than our differences. Walk through a Walmart on some Sunday afternoon and you will quickly realize without a shadow of a doubt that we are not living as we should. I hesitate to say, “as we were meant to“, because, intellectually I have yet to embrace some idea of predetermination, or other god type concept. I think it is highly important to celebrate life, reflect on beauty and display reverence to the forces that make that possible for personal growth, but subscribing to a religion or giving allegiance to a god has never made sense to me. My wager is that if I love and perpetuate love, and never have a reason to ask forgiveness, than even if there is a Saint Peter, or an Allah, all they will be able to say to me when I reach the pearly gates will be “ Well done, my brother,” but it’s pointless to act on mythologies of the afterlife, without considering how best to live right here and right now. And to live best right here and right now is to not think about the future, not worry about tomorrow, or retirement. Is the idea of sitting in a mobile home at 65 careening along the vast highways, or watching days of our lives everyday really that attractive??

The security of a job may put one at ease, especially when mortgaged to your eyeballs, and leveraged beyond your next offspring, but is that how animals are healthiest. I’m pretty sure that every animal I’ve ever known who knew when their next meal came from, and never had to worry about shelter, or survival was less fit than its wild counterpart, including representatives of our own species. A more dynamic, visceral experience and interaction with the world can only be more satisfying, and lend itself to wider and deeper personal growth and knowledge. That is why I live as I do, and even as the bills mount, and I cannot work in my normal capacities, and I am really scared as to how I will eat in two weeks time, I know, for me, this is the right way to be, and though my smile”o”meter may be registering fewer smiles than normal for me, my standard of living will continue to be very high, and I am very thankful for that, and know that it has nothing to do with Republicans, Halliburton, Ford or even Thomas Jefferson.

An Ode to Fungus

2011-10-29T18:56:00.000-04:00

Now that fall is giving way to winter, I'm going to re-post a poem that I wrote two years ago, about this very night. The first killing frost, and the last night for mushrooms until the thaw.

Hark A Poem

The mushrooms will come no more.
The Bishop’s Mitre succumbs to hoar
Standing firm in proud virtue
They soon know a cold that's all and true

The Marasmius fairy rings do crack and brown
Nipples held aloft will
Soften, then lay down
In short cropped pasture
In long neglected lawn
The night time dancing fairy rituals
Which go unseen are gone.

Chanterelles, which have heroically
parted and plied the duff
Will soften, ooze and rot,
Having said enough is enough.
My dear Cyanescens
Who seem to know their part,
Will brown, blue, black
Thus finishing their art.

Solace does show on this frosty morning
New light shimmers on bejeweled ice of night
Crowned in gold, the sparrows
As they spread their wings in flight.
And yet, firm wine Russulas
Continue in their way.

In moist moss forests
Feed Flying Squirrels by night
Scaphinotus beetles in the day.
The time of the fungus, again it’s come and gone.
Cycle upon cycle, darkness spins to dawn.

Occupy Providence

2011-10-16T12:13:00.001-04:00

Some more photos can be seen if you click here!

The Face of a Revolution

2011-10-06T06:40:00.000-04:00

If I hear anything from any of my friends or relatives about this just being Hippies and Losers with no concrete message again I might explode. You fucking unimaginative cowards, of course many of the first people to join a movement are going to be those most marginalized, or those already in conflict with the government. That includes homeless gutter punks, shiftless hippies, thespians, artists and yes, some anarchists, and even people with mental illness. Who were you expecting, John Adams and Paul Revere? Who do you think began the shit storm in Tahrir Square?? It was students and women, and then the rest of the nation joined in. Just as those are joining the Wall Street Revolution as we speak, in every city across this molding nation. Fifty thousand people last night!

I don't know one single person who disagrees with the message of Occupy Wall Street, not one. I've read a few rants by bankers and politicians, but I've yet to meet some one who thinks the level of Corporate power in our government and what Wall Street firms did to our economy with impunity isn't outrageous. See the root of that; Outrage!! Where is yours?

Now, I'm going to get a little more into what has been happening and why people think the Lotion Man is Occupy Wall Street. You see, the movement is ALL encompassing, meaning these sentiments are shared by all, from Ron Paul supporters to Hari Krishnas to even nihlistic, homeless gutter punks and probably, even you. Now, a lot of these people crave the spot light, and I would venture to guess, attention is something that's been lacking in their lives, as they are homeless. The main stream media is more than willing to put their crazy talk out to the masses, because that just gives you more reason to stay home in your condo, and watch Dancing with the Stars instead of joining in solidarity. We know that you feel powerless and that your vote doesn't matter. We all lost hope with the fizzling of Obama's fortitude. But what these crazy, awesome people down in Liberty Plaza in Wall Street are giving you is your voice back. This is your chance to find your power and express your voice. Washington DC and the status quo are quaking in their boots right now. It is time to be the New Revolution, and the sooner you join, the better you will feel about yourself.

The Wall Street Revolution will be televised, but those broadcasts will always tell their Big Money loving side of the story. The only way you will know what it is all about is to go for yourself, or to seek out more information. BP oil is still washing ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, today. Really. When's the last time you heard about that? BP gave Obama more money than ANY other politician in history. Is that the kind of democracy you want to live in? Me either. Joining the Wall Street Revolution does not have to mean taking to the streets. You can send supplies, you can write your elected officials in support, or you can just talk about it in public, and help stir the pot. It will happen with or without you, I'm just trying to re-awaken in you what it feels like to be human and to own your own destiny and to feel, and to turn your hopelessness, anger or despondency into a constructive force that will help re-shape this once great nation into something that resembles what our fore-fathers and so many soldiers have sacrificed so much for. It's in our hands.

My Occupy Wall Street Experience: Part I

2011-10-03T23:02:00.000-04:00

Part of the reason that I wanted to go to Wall Street was to see what this whole thing is about for myself. After my experience with the BP oil disaster, I am all too suspicious of how the main stream media treats inconvenient news, ie. news that might somehow hurt the bottom line. What I had seen and heard was that the scene was chaotic, led by a bunch of no good hippies, and that it wasn't going anywhere. What I felt though, was that perhaps, this might be the beginning of the real paradigm shift that we've all been longing for. If that is true, I can't just sit by and watch it on ABC.

Upon arrival in Zuccoti Square, now known as Liberty Plaza, the birthplace of the new revolution, my first impressions were varied. Immediately, the "gutter punk" contingent was evident, as were some sloppy signs, some with some pretty incoherent messages painted on them, but there were also MANY people my age or older, and families and children, all fighting for your future. Having a camera around my neck kind of put me on the other side of the lines, and seemed to raise some suspicions and establish a barrier between myself and many of the people gathered there. I spent the whole day yesterday working through that, and getting over it in my own head.

For me the major issue in our country and world is the extended and over-represented hand of Big Corporate Money in our government and in our electoral process. I see this is an easy fix, at least, the legislation is easy to draft, and if we can gather the steam to apply sufficient pressure going in to the 2012 election cycle I really think we have a solid opportunity to create and affect change.

It's simple math, corporations have a single mandate, which is to make money. Given that, they must take it upon themselves to affect legislation and the political process in EVERY manner possible that might benefit the corporation. There is no choice. It is the sole reason for their existence. Given this truth, and the lee way that our government has continued to expand, most appallingly when the supreme court ruled in favor of corporations in January, 2010 and increased their first amendment rights as well as their ability to affect elections. Given these FACTS, there is no way that our government can now or ever will function for the people but will ALWAYS be over represented by the 1% of the world that controls half of the wealth and resources, unless we change this NOW.

This is the basis for EVERY single problem in our world and our society, environmental, social, fiscal, etc., and can only continue to worsen. That is a truth that I think everyone can get on board with. And, if that's the case, I think now is the time that you ask yourself, even if it is just a bunch of hippies, down on Wall Street, (which it's not), can you afford NOT to join them??

My biggest fear is that our people are so distracted and apathetic that if the media can manage to play this right, it might just fizzle out before you get the chance. One big round up by the police and another distraction like say, bombing Pakistan, maybe the world will just forget about the opportunity we had once to take the reins back on this run away carriage, and slow this contraption down before it rattles apart and explodes in a cloud of splinters of what might have been. if we miss this opportunity, I shudder to think of the repercussions. I very much fear an apathetic backlash of insurmountable consequence if this movement fails.

So, en fin, my lasting impression as I left Wall Street was one of hope. I feel that every day, the message becomes more concrete, and more and more people embrace the possibility to exist in the world as real people and not automated consumer-bots. The people occupying Wall Street are a well educated, age diverse, and politically varied crowd from angry gutter punks to raging grannies to patriotic trade unions, each with their own valid opinion on the state of the world and what we need to do to change it, but the common denominator is that they know a change MUST come above all else, and they have the courage to stand up and shout it in a very hostile land. Have you got that courage?

And Now, a wonderful poem of solemn inspiration:

Shine, Perishing Republic

Robinson Jeffers

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening

to empire

And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out,
and the
mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots

to make earth.

Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;

and home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly

long or suddenly

A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:

shine, perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
center; corruption

Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there

are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,

insufferable master.

There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught – they say –

God, when he walked on earth.

On Civil Disobedience: Henry David Thoreau

2011-09-24T18:06:00.000-04:00

Too Many people have complained about our government and the corporate control of our country,(our world) and done nothing, but even worse are those who admonish those people with statements like, " It's the best damn country in the world, why don't you go live in Ethiopia and see how you like it."

Well, if you lived in a bucket, and everyone else lived in a bucket, and all buckets were also filled with shit, yet yours was the only one that did not also contain piss as well as shit, yours would be the best bucket in which to live. This is the America we now live in. The nation which our forefathers and mothers fought so hard for and invented so thoughtfully and creatively. You now have a bucket full of walmart shit made in china to live in, and you don't even own it, Chase does!

With that in mind, I publish in its entirety Thoreau's essay, "on Civil Disobedience " Grab yourself a beer, or some tea if you prefer and settle in and read this. This is what America was founded on, and this is what our country should be.

On Civil Disobedience

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.

This American government--what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. _It_ does not keep the country free. _It_ does not settle the West. _It_ does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievious persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not _at once_ no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?--in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation _with_ a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts--a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment, though it may be,
"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero was buried."
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without _intending_ it, as God. A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and _men_--serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office to his dust at least:
"I am too high born to be propertied, To be a second at control, Or useful serving-man and instrument To any sovereign state throughout the world."
He who gives himself entirely to his fellow men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them in pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as _my_ government which is the _slave's_ government also.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of '75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counter-balance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the "Duty of Submission to Civil Government," resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say that "so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconvenience, it is the will of God . . . that the established government be obeyed--and no longer. This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other." Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.

In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does anyone think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?
"A drab of stat, a cloth-o'-silver slut, To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt."

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, _cost what it may_. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not as materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are _in opinion_ opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for other to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give up only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man. But it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even _voting for the right_ is _doing_ nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. _They_ will then be the only slaves. Only _his_ vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of this wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only _available_ one, thus proving that he is himself _available_ for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many _men_ are there to a square thousand miles in the country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow--one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the almshouses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund to the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently.
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico--see if I would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves--the union between themselves and the State--and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?
How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy _it_? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see to it that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divided States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the _individual_, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. _It_ makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and _do_ better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offense never contemplated by its government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate, penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who put him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

As for adopting the ways of the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do _everything_, it is not necessary that he should be doing _something_ wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconcilliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death, which convulse the body.

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

I meet this American government, or its representative, the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year--no more--in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with--for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel--and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well that he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he will treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name--if ten _honest_ men only--ay, if _one_ HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, _ceasing to hold slaves_, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the State's ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question of human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister--though at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a quarrel with her--the Legislature would not wholly waive the subject of the following winter.
Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less despondent spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not _with_ her, but _against_ her--the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.

I have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather than the seizure of his goods--though both will serve the same purpose--because they who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property. To such the State renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as that are called the "means" are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. "Show me the tribute-money," said he--and one took a penny out of his pocket--if you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, _if you are men of the State_, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar's government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it. "Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God those things which are God's"--leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know.

When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences to their property and families of disobedience to it. For my own part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State. But, if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said: "If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are subjects of shame." No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.

Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the Church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. "Pay," it said, "or be locked up in the jail." I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster; for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax bill, and have the State to back its demand, as well as the Church. However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing: "Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined." This I gave to the town clerk; and he has it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original presumption that time. If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find such a complete list.
I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and _they_ were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of _men_ being _forced_ to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to nature, it dies; and so a man.

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The prisoners in their shirtsleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the doorway, when I entered. But the jailer said, "Come, boys, it is time to lock up"; and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer as "a first-rate fellow and clever man." When the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably neatest apartment in town. He naturally wanted to know where I came from, and what brought me there; and, when I had told him, I asked him in my turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of course; and as the world goes, I believe he was. "Why," said he, "they accuse me of burning a barn; but I never did it." As near as I could discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was burnt. He had the reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three months waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer; but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated.

He occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw that if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out the window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various occupants of that room; for I found that even there there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.

I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should never see him again; but at length he showed me which was my bed, and left me to blow out the lamp.

It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn--a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about.

In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they called for the vessels again, I was green enough to return what bread I had left, but my comrade seized it, and said that I should lay that up for lunch or dinner. Soon after he was let out to work at haying in a neighboring field, whither he went every day, and would not be back till noon; so he bade me good day, saying that he doubted if he should see me again.

When I came out of prison--for some one interfered, and paid that tax--I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a youth and emerged a gray-headed man; and yet a change had come to my eyes come over the scene--the town, and State, and country, greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that in their sacrifices to humanity they ran no risks, not even to their property; that after all they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that many of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village.

It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the jail window, "How do ye do?" My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour--for the horse was soon tackled--was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
This is the whole history of "My Prisons."

I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the tax bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one with--the dollar is innocent--but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get what advantages of her I can, as is usual in such cases.

If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the State, they do but what they have already done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the State requires. If they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save his property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere with the public good.
This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too much on his guard in such a case, lest his actions be biased by obstinacy or an undue regard for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour.

I think sometimes, Why, this people mean well, they are only ignorant; they would do better if they knew how: why give your neighbors this pain to treat you as they are not inclined to? But I think again, This is no reason why I should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much greater pain of a different kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself, When many millions of men, without heat, without ill will, without personal feelings of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their constitution, of retracting or altering their present demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to any other millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force? You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. You do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But if I put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts.

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people to discover a pretext for conformity.

"We must affect our country as our parents, And if at any time we alienate Our love or industry from doing it honor, We must respect effects and teach the soul Matter of conscience and religion, And not desire of rule or benefit."

I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better patriot than my fellow-countrymen. Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable, and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all?
However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which _is not_ never for a long time appearing _to be_ to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.
I know that most men think differently from myself; but those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred subjects content me as little as any. Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind's range and hospitality. Yet, compared with the cheap professions of most reformers, and the still cheaper wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only sensible and valuable words, and we thank Heaven for him. Comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still, his quality is not wisdom, but prudence. The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. He well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows to be given him but defensive ones. He is not a leader, but a follower. His leaders are the men of '87. "I have never made an effort," he says, "and never propose to make an effort; I have never countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which various States came into the Union." Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, "Because it was part of the original compact--let it stand." Notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations, and behold it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellect--what, for instance, it behooves a man to do here in American today with regard to slavery--but ventures, or is driven, to make some such desperate answer to the following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a private man--from which what new and singular of social duties might be inferred? "The manner," says he, "in which the governments of the States where slavery exists are to regulate it is for their own consideration, under the responsibility to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it. They have never received any encouragement from me and they never will." [These extracts have been inserted since the lecture was read -HDT]

They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humanity; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountainhead.

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufactures and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation.

The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to--for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well--is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which I have also imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

Now, grab a pitchfork and get your ass down to New York City and tell those assholes what our country wants and needs!!!

Tropical Terns in RI; Hurricane Irene

2011-08-30T12:59:00.000-04:00

I'll post a little bit more detailed of a blog in a little bit about the entire day, and all of the cool birds and other Irene related phenomena that we were bestowed with this weekend but in the mean time, here are a few photos of some Bridled Terns found on Sunday in Galilee, Rhode Island.

My first views of the birds came at 1140 in the morning, after birding and sightseeing around Narragansett since well before dawn. I saw a darker backed Tern flying in the channel in front of George's restaurant. The wind was blowing steadily out of the south/southeast about 50 mph or more, and the rain and sand were blowing at an injurious rate. The bird I saw was struggling against the wind, and I only saw it for about 10-15 seconds. I managed to snap some horrible photos of the bird with my wide angle lens, covered in salt spray and out of focus before the bird settled down behind the rock jetty on the other side of the pier. Two field marks that I saw were that the light collar on the bird continued all the away around the nape of the neck, separating the dark cap and the mantle, and that the cap was very dark, contrasting heavily with the lighter mantle color. The lighting was pretty bad, but comparing the two relative to each other I thought was good enough for me to text Jan St. Jean and others with a report of probable Bridled Tern.

Here is the best of my first photos of the bird. It clearly shows all of the above field marks....NOT!!

Having not seen any other birders all day, or gotten any reports, or even read any reports from other states, I was kind of frantic about the fact that this would be a rare encounter, and I wouldn't have proof, and that no one else would see the birds. Luckily for me, there have since been numerous accounts of tropical terns in the past couple of days from the state, and many birders have had the chance to see them.

I hung out for a bit in Galilee, waiting to see if the bird would fly, or if anything else would show up, but it didn't so I drove around seeing things like 6 Royal Terns in the Sand Hill Cove Parking lot with 3 Marbled Godwits, and a Pomeranian Jaeger flyover. I figured my best chance of documenting the bird was to get to the other side of the jetty, where I figured the bird would be roosting. I waited for the bulk of the storm to pass and the wind to switch to Southwest and decided that now was as good a time as any to press my luck with the police who were blocking the way down there. Luckily my shop is behind the road block and I had an excuse, and after a little talking, the cop let me through.

I checked my shop really quick and found very little damage, except to my beautiful zinias and scooted down the road toward where I had last seen the bird. I made my way to the beach, but all I found were 7 Common Terns where I had hoped to find the Bridled. No luck. I then went to check on my buddy's fish market, "Skip's Dock". It looked fine, except for the screen door which was being blown around, and as I was trying to secure it, zoom, a brown-backed tern flew by. I ran and got my camera and got great looks at the bird. Here are some photos and discussion. Please keep in mind that it was VERY windy, and not ideal photo conditions. The pictures are pretty bad, but in my view and lack of experience with the species, (or Sooty for that matter) show the birds I saw to be Bridled Terns. The photos have not been altered in any way as far as color saturation or other adjustments are concerned, but have been cropped and zoomed to focus on the birds a little closer.

So here is a tern. First, notice the distinct molt that is happening. The bird is missing one or two of its inner primaries which exposes the lighter colored inner web of the next primary. This appeared as white spot and allowed me to recognize this bird as the same bird that I viewed for over an hour. It has similar molt in the greater primary coverts that appeared as a white spot as well. In this photo, you can see that the back is grayish brown, not slate, or sooty black, but that alone tells you nothing, as in bad light colors can appear very different, but coupled with the much darker cap it can be relied on a little more. Other field characters helpful in distinguishing Sooty versus Bridled, namely the extent of the white superciliary and amount of white in the tail or not visible in this bad photo.

The field guides all present different interpretations of these birds, and I used a combination of Harrison's "Seabirds", the National Geographic guide and the new Stokes guide to help me work on this, as I have never seen a Bridled Tern before, and had no guidance from any more experienced birders.

This image is a little better, but not the best either. The underwing shows well, and we can see the darker outer web of the primaries and secondary tips, which contrast with the white wing linings and secondaries and primary bases. To me this helps show it as a Bridled, as I think the extent and contrast would be greater in a Sooty, but not really sure about that, hoping some people will weigh in on this. Also, most of the books show the blackish alula showing though on the underwing of the Sooty Tern, which appears as a black carpal patch. This was not apparent on any of the birds that I saw. The main thing about this photo though is the superciliary which continues past the eye and the forehead which is narrow.

A close up of the superciliary.

After about a half an hour of watching this one bird alternately forage and roost, a second bird joined it for a second. This bird appeared cleaner, though it was also molting in the primaries symmetrically, and I got a few photos of both birds together. On Monday, Tom Auer, Jan St. Jean and I had great looks at a bird at Napatree point which appeared very similar to these birds, but with much more white throughout the crown, and we assumed that bird to be a first summer Bridled Tern. Having seen that, and given the symmetric remig molt of these birds I would assume that they are after hatch year birds. The two disappeared somewhere out of site near the wall, and I assumed that they were roosting and tried to find them, but without trespassing, I failed to relocate the birds.

A little later, I joined a group that was watching the birds from near Champlin's Seafood in Galilee. When I arrived, two birds were roosting on the wall. The group was calling them Sootys, and that made me uncomfortable. Since I had only seen two birds in over an hour of watching, I assumed these to be the same birds, which I thought I had pretty confidently ID'd as Bridleds. They were perched on a wall, completely backlit and appeared very dark. The group was sure that they were Sootys, but I thought that was a pretty bad look, and then they flew. Here is a photo of the two birds that were roosting on the wall.

Looking at the molt of the front bird, I'm pretty sure that these were the same two birds that I had been observing earlier that afternoon. This photo shows the clear contrast between the caps and mantle, and the superciliary which extends in front of the eyes, as well as the narrow forehead patch. Scott Tsagarkis and I got a good look at one of the birds as it wheeled around and spread its tail, and you could see that the tail had extensive white in it, and the central coloration was brown, and not blackish.

I'll be the first to admit my lack of knowledge and experience about abundance and distribution of birds in RI, and I think that sometimes works to my benefit, as birds don't read books either. There was a lot of group pressure to call those birds Sooty Terns based on a very bad look in horrible light, and I even got texts that night saying that all of the Mass reports were Sootys, intimating that because of that data somehow my call was wrong. Maybe it was my report of 300 Northern Rough-winged Swallows last week that got people thinking I don't know my birds, and maybe there were fewer, but I can ID a Rough-winged Swallow by call, and this was certainly the largest group I have ever seen, in any state or country. Either way, I felt that my ID was dismissed, and that people didn't want to do the real work, but were content just calling it what they wanted. It's very interesting how group dynamics, preconceived notions and desires all interact when we're watching birds, and we got a great example of that, when 8 birders identified a Gull-billed Tern, which photographs proved to be a Sandwich Tern. These were some of the best birders in the state all agreeing on the ID.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least to have an expert Tern person ID these as Sootys, and if that's the case it'll certainly be interesting, and I really hope some people with more of a knowledge base can weigh in on these photos. Being wrong is ok. I'm wrong all the time, but when we recognize that we are wrong is when we really learn and take things to heart.

Drew is interviewed by Tim Cantworre from the Whether Channel as Irene approaches RI

2011-08-26T18:05:00.001-04:00

Check out this awesome interview that Drew did with the Whether Channel today!!!!

Block Canyon Pelagic Trip

2011-08-24T08:39:00.000-04:00

On Friday the 19th, I slipped onto the sold out Pelagic trip organized by Carlos Pedro as someone on the trip dropped out and I was on the wait list. The trip was a 24 hour deep-water pelagic that hoped to turn up some sweet birds like a Pterodroma Petrel, or Bridled Terns and Leach's Storm-Petrels. The weather forecast was perfect in terms of quiet seas and sunny skies, but with a few clouds to highlight birds on the horizon. However, the perfect weather meant that the more rare birds weren't getting pushed around outside of their normal haunts.

Most were up before dawn and were treated to a wonderful sunrise as we hit the edge of the Block Canyon, a deep chasm that feeds into the Hudson Canyon, the remnants of the glacial Hudson River.
Some people had looks at a Cory's Shearwater early and a Leach's Storm-Petrel as well. I missed both!!! I've seen them before, but would've liked them for my year list!!

We had PLENTY of Wilson's Storm-Petrels!! Especially after we chummed with some dogfish livers. They really came in in droves after that was in the water!

At times we had a hundred Storm-Petrels around the boat, but the night-hawk like flight of the Leach's failed to be seen, nor the elusive Band-rumped Storm-Petrel! Bummer

Despite the smell, the deckhands got right in there and cut it all up sans gloves!!!

We got some great looks at Great Shearwaters!! People still have a hard time not saying Greater, but it doesn't really matter anyway!

Here's one with some Wilson's Storm-Petrels behind it

We had some excitement when from the upper deck came shouts of "Tropical Tern Tropical Tern!!!" What was meant by this was a brown backed Tern of Tropical origins, namely a Sooty or a Bridled Tern. I got on the bird right away, but it was a little far out for me to get a telling look at the head. I saw the back color well, and the white under parts, but for my lifer Bridled Tern, I wasn't willing to call it. Bummer!!! Someone got a photo, and the leaders were able to confirm the ID as a Bridled Tern, but I'm conservative with my lifers. I don't count heard only lifers either! I'm a birdwatcher, I like to see them. Heard only for a daily list is different, that's about noting detections, but a life list for me is a special thing, and I want to see my lifers well!

Seen well, like this Great Shearwater!!

Even though the trip didn't yield too many rarities it was still a great time, and provided 40 birders the chance to get to know each other in close quarters and put faces to the names floating around on the net, and a chance to get really familiar with hard to see pelagic birds, and only a couple people puked. We also saw lots of cool Fin Whales and dolphins, and a Basking Shark and a huge Logger-head Sea Turtle. But as Jan would say NFF!!

The day ended with a wonderful sunset over Block Island, and we said our goodbyes.

Birding is wicked fun!!!

A Letter To a Jerk; Culmination of a Crazy Summer

2011-08-18T08:59:00.000-04:00

I wrote this after an email I received last night from the guy who charged me rent all winter for a pice of shit building that leaked and was full of his stuff, and never told the landowners that he was renting the property.

To Jimmy:

The email I just read had the tone of a shakedown. Not too cool.

Our deal was a month to month deal, and as far as I am concerned ended as soon as the OWNER of the property told me not to pay you when she realized that you had been renting to me since January and not telling her about it. When they pulled up they told me that they thought you were running a convenience store and were totally surprised at my presence. I was then told "not to give you another dime." So, until Antoinette Contalbiano tells me herself anything different that is how I stand. I don't think that interferes whatsoever with your relationship and or verbal agreement with them about the property.

As far as I understand, they still have every intention of honoring your agreement in terms of the 10% of selling price if and when the building sells.

The date of my exit depends on my current negotiations with Antoinette about a year-long lease. If I am staying, then I will be open until Columbus day, if not then I will have to figure that out.

How could you have a renter committed to something that you don't know about. I'm really confused. You rented me the space in January, charged me $350 a month for about 50 square feet of space because your property nearly filled the entire contents of the building. The deal was that any work I did on the jobs listed would come out of the rent. I put 20 plus hours into tiling the floor, built a sink and connected the plumbing, sewed six custom roman shades, put over 30 hours into finishing the plaster work and repainted. I never did the basement work because it was never going to work, and because there were never any materials provided to get the job done. I never got a hot water heater because I never needed one. That was to come out of the rent if I did, it wasn't a requirement of me renting.

What I have done with the building is by far the best thing that has happened to it since it was a gift-shop in the early nineties. I have heard it from every person in the community, and how happy they are that I am there. If you, as in you and Antoinette, weren't so insane you would realize that I have a good thing going on and you would do everything in your power to keep me there. Instead, I got emails and drunk texts on the verge of threatening me.

What do you mean, “if you don't answer ...i will be there.... a lot more.”?????
That was a quotation from your email, so you’re saying, had I not gone home and checked my email tonight, and seen this, and not answered you, that you will be at my shop…. With “a lot more.”???? What the fuck, are you insane???

If you’re the property manager call the owner and ask her to tell me to pay you instead of her, and I’ll cut you a check for August rent minus the water bill, $30/ hour for the plumbing, $20 hour for the tile work, plus materials, and $40/hour for the custom window treatments, plus materials.

I don’t understand why this has to be shady, and why you and the two Toni/y’s can’t just be straight. All I’ve ever wanted was a straight relationship and agreement. June was tough for me, but I paid it although a little late, as any renter would have, and there are normal guidelines and laws that regulate this type of activity.

I appreciate the opportunity, and experience that I’ve had here, and owe a lot of that to our chance meeting and serendipity, but you’ve never really been straight with me about anything from the get go in terms of your relationship with Antionette and the building, and you weren’t quite straight with the hot dog people, and they lost a huge investment. You keep getting people to take all of the risk in hopes that you’re going to get something out of it and never risk anything yourself. I put myself out there, and now it seems like you’re trying to muscle me out, and I just want to say that when you’re a straight shooter, and don’t have anything that anyone can call you on, then you never have to worry about anyone calling you on your shit. It’s really what karma boils down to, and I’d like you to know that I’m not worried about being called on any of my shit because all I’ve done is worked my fucking ass off and obeyed the letter of the law and all of the agreements that I have made with the various people that have been involved with this endeavor.

So, I hope you come. I have cleaned the back so that you can show it to your prospective buyer. I thank you for the notice, although a phone call would have insured that I got it. I will have a check for you for your consigned glasses and bracelets, but I would like to terminate our consigning arrangement and ask you to remove your wares from the store as well, and request that you not treat me like a douche. I’m fucking sick of it.

Drew

The Rare Birds of Coney Island

2011-08-06T07:49:00.000-04:00

Eventually, I'll get some text up here to illuminate some of the finer points of chasing this bird, but until then, here are some photos. This was my first cross state border twitch, and it was well worth it!! The experience of such an amazing bird on the boardwalk of Coney Island was nearly too much! Anyway, here are some photos

Here, the rare Gray-headed Gull hangs out with some other rare Coney Island creatures

The Gull seemed to exert some dominance, grabbing food in front of larger Ring-billed Gulls and Laughing Gulls

At times, even though it was such a good bird, it was easy to get distracted!

The local kids had no idea how special this bird was and chased it like any other rat with wings

My focus was still on manual, so I kind of blew these two shots in flight, but they're still fun with the rides in the background

Against the Wonder Wheel!

It was really quite the scene!

Here you can see the conspicuous white wing patches behind the black in the wing tips. A very obvious character that sets it apart from the Laughing Gulls in flight.

Here you can see that the bird seems to be molting one of its primaries in both wings.

Even the locals broke out their iphones for some pix!

The cops kept their eyes on the Connecticut contingent while they kept their eyes on the Gull!!

It really is a handsome bird!!

Norman Baits.... and Tackle

2011-06-29T21:57:00.000-04:00

New Shirt design, trying to get some printed by the weekend.

New Artists at the Gallery!!!

2011-06-27T20:29:00.000-04:00

I'm super excited to have some new art on the walls at the Gallery. As the summer action begins to heat up, BirdSong will be featuring the art of Rebekah Cook, an acclaimed and amazing oil painter from Narragansett, RI. Rebekah often works on large canvases, so the space at the Gallery has been a bit of a challenge to best showcase Rebekah's work, but I think we're doing it jiustice. Rebekah is known for her amazing seascapes and coastal themed oils that blend local scenes with dramatic color and emotion.

Also, tonight, the town council of South Kingstown granted me my victualing license which will allow me to sell bottled drinks and pre-packaged snacks. I guess I need to buy a fridge now!!

On the bird scene, Greater Yellowlegs have been heard for the last couple of days in and around the Gallery, and young Red-winged Blackbirds rae all over the marsh, descending in large groups to forage in the short Spartina. Also, it appears that the resident Mute Swans who lost their five fledglings to the elements are not going to re-nest, so that's kind of nice!! Today on a short walk to the beach my friend Charlie and I heard two rails do a couple of calls back and forth to each other. They sounded most like Clapper Rails, but they weren't giving their full vocalizations, so I'm not going to venture a wager.

Here's my new poster:

Upholstery and Costa Rica

2011-06-10T07:06:00.000-04:00

Because it's the only photo I have access to right now, here is the custom 83 Sportster that I did the seat for. It's the second motorcycle seat I've done this spring, and as it was custom, built by a non-upholsterer it presented some challenges. All agree that it came out well, and I'm pretty excited about my new vocation. Motorcycle seats are pretty big market.
My Mom is an upholsterer, and I've worked for her since I was 10. In Latin America women don't sew anything but clothes, and no one believes that my mother works in such a valiant capacity. "Que valiente" they say.

Now on a more serious note, and since it's below the photo, no one will read, but the Costa Rican Government is saying that I haven't registered my company which owns my property since 2007, and I have receipts showing that I paid my lawyer to register it through 2009 with the understanding that he would continue to do so. He told my caretaker that he has no recollection of this. As it stands now, they will bulldoze my house on July 26th. Awesome!! I have no money to get there. No way to take time off. I think all of my paperwork is in a filing cabinet in a locked garage in Port Angeles, Washington, and I have no way of getting it. So, anyone who has woken up to the sounds of Macaws in the morning or looked at Pacific Screech Owls in the yard, rest assured that those things will continue to happen, only my involvement with those events might be less!! ARrrggghhh, and it all comes crashing down at once!!!

New Beginnings

2011-06-09T09:49:00.000-04:00

Well, Crazy life has been really crazy for the last little bit and showing no signs of slowing down, but in the interest of prioritizing, I am dropping a few things that I would normally do daily to add in a few, like blogging again. Yes the pattern here is evident, but please don't judge. To fill you in real quick, in the past few months, I have re-furbished a building, opened a gallery/giftshop, gone completely broke, seen a few life birds , taken a few cool photos, broken mine and other's hearts, met some cool people, travelled to Minnesota, had my license suspended for not getting my car inspected, drove around for a while on a suspended license, got pulled over, and let go by an oblivious providence cop, oh and did I mention I finally saw my first Rhode Island Canada Warbler, within feet of my gallery no less!
So, here's to new beginnings, and a cool photo that I took last night. Tell your friends, Drew is back blogging, and this is going to be one hell of a ride. Hang on tight.

Narragansett Towers during the storm last night.

Oil Disaster Show and Benefit

2011-04-25T13:01:00.000-04:00

Well, my life is returning back to a semblance of normalcy after having been working a million hours a day, and not eating or sleeping to get ready for my first show at the Gallery and at the nearby Matunuck Oyster Bar. The show was last Wednesday, on the one year anniversary of the oil spill and featured photography by myself, Holt Webb and Shawn Carey. All the photos were framed in reclaimed wood and stained in actual BP oil, some of it Cypress that I brought back from Louisiana. We held a silent auction with a lot of support from local Rhode Island businesses and all proceeds from sales of photos and the auction went to charitable causes.

When I was down in the Gulf I wanted to do more to help the local fishermen than I had been able to do, so I asked a couple of locals whom I had grown to respect very much during my time down there who needed more help then they were getting. Karen Hopkins of Dean Blanchard Seafood and Buggy Vegas, owner of the Bridgeside Marina suggested that any efforts go to help Brian Zito and Donny Willard.

Both Donny and Brian are lifelong shrimpers, and both of them were excluded from BP's vessels of opportunity program which was meant to put out of work fishermen to work cleaning up the oil. In reality, the oil was mostly sprayed and sunk, and fishermen were routinely sent away from the oil rather than pick it up. Anyway, both of these guys were ready and willing to work, but BP thought that their boats weren't suitable for the job, so they never got the chance. Instead lots of recreational fishermen who didn't even live on the gulf full time were put to work. In a phone conversation last week with Donny, he said that although he has turned in three years of records to BP showing lost income he has received but a fraction of what is owed to him, and he has since lost his home and is now living in a post-Katrina FEMA trailer. WHen I left the Gulf last year, the feds had opened the waters for shrimping, but neither Brian or Donny would eat what was coming out of the Gulf themselves, so they didn't feel right bringing it to market.

Other beneficiaries of the event are the Waterkeepers Alliance's Save our Gulf campaign, and Save The Bay, Rhode Island. So far, we have raised over $1500 to be disbursed between Donny, Brian, Save The Bay and the Waterkkepers. Pretty cool. It may not save the world, but it might buy some groceries, or make a truck payment, or get some testing done, or help monitor the environment here in Rhode Island. I'm in the process of getting the unsold photos up on eBay to try and generate some more funds for these guys and I'll let you know when that process is complete.

I want to thank everyone who came out to show support and remember what happened just one year ago. The Gulf is still suffering as are the people and communities that depend upon its health for their very sustenance. I especially want to thank Perry Raso of the Matunuck Oyster Bar, and Dave Prescott of Save The Bay for helping to bring it all together. I am broker than broke, and I need to thank from the bottom of my heart Tom Sayers and Shawn Carey for getting my images printed, and to Images Design of Wakefield, RI for their last minute save to print my two most important images. Narragansett Beer also really stepped up to the plate to help out with libations and some goodies for the auction. I also want to thank Crazy Burger and Bill Krul Photography of Narraganset, RI and the Alternative Food Co-op, Birdwatcher's Natureview, Food For Thought, All That Matters, SaltPond Pottery, Silvertides Jewelry, Rising Designs Jewelry, Mary Bouvier Massage, The Reynolds Barn Cheese folks all from South Kingstown, RI and lastly, Sevenply Surf and Skate from Westerly, RI all for donating great stuff for the silent auction. If I forgot anyone, I'll be birdwatching alone tomorrow evening at Trustom Pond, so you can ambush me and beat me up if you want!

After building all of the frames, I had to stain them with a BP oil/mineral spirit mixture. They were then coated in polyurethane to lock in the nasty toxins.

Checking out some of the stuff at the Oyster Bar

The Main Wall at BirdSong Gallery

And some more!

A Northern Gannet

2011-04-07T07:20:00.000-04:00

In two weeks I will be showing some photography from the Gulf Oil Disaster at my Gallery and at the Matunuck Oyster Bar. From now until then I'll be posting images from the show here, I guess.
This is a Northern Gannet from May 23rd on Grand Terre Island, just east of Grand Isle, Louisiana.

The Northern Gannet

2011-04-04T08:28:00.000-04:00

The Northern Gannet, Morus bassanus, is an amazing bird. Many non-birders have never seen the likes of this thing, as they usually ply the winds and water just out of view for the landlubber. In fact, as I was taking these photos, one of the guys on the boat asked me, "what is that, some kind of female seagull?" Clearly we need to re-engauge our relationship with nature. Here are a couple of photos of Gannets that I took last week, on my last trip on the lobster boat. Sorry I've been blowing the blogging thing yet again, but not any more. I pledge to blog every othah day for evah! The BirdSong Diaries is gonna get old fast!

Gannets were one of the most affected birds of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, as they winter and forage throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Though many were on their way to breeding colonies in northern Canada when the rig blew, a lot of younger birds remained behind to enjoy the bounty of the Louisiana Coast throughout their first year of life. Instead, they dove on pogies and surfaced with a sticky goo all over their plumage, and they died grizzly deaths out on the ocean, unable to thermoregulate or forage. Since there was NO effort to search for, count, or survey for seabirds in the first two months of the disaster, the world will NEVER know the actual toll taken on these guys.
Gannets are known for their spectacular dives. They will often plummet from heights of 30 feet or more onto schools of herring below, and actually use their wings to swim after fish as they rocket through the water. This one is wheeling around, just before a dive.

Northern Gannets are relatives of the Blue-footed Booby, the comical bird popularized by Darwin and Kurt Vonnegut for their goofy courtship rituals. Gannets have similar courtship and mating displays. They are long-lived birds with amazing survival strategies.

A Short Story About Lobstering

2011-03-03T18:05:00.000-05:00

Sitting in the wheelhouse about to throw the lines and scoot out of the harbor for a few days. There isn't even a hint of wind on the pond right now and the weather looks good for the whole trip. One of the deckhands is joking about the flavor of Puffins right now, and I'm pretending to laugh as if it's funny, and the cliche"ness" of it all is kind of funny, but not really in a humorous way.

So below is a story about lobstering that I submitted to NPR's 3 minute fiction contest, and I knew when I wrote it that it wasn't great, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway. I haven't ever really written anything like this before, but what the hay?? Right?

I heard some of the stories in consideration this month, and they're way better, but my story is kind of based on a real incident that happened a couple of years ago in Point Judith, RI. Considering that one of the guys I fished with last week spent 7 minutes in the water of the Gulf of Maine in February last year, and since I've been fishing this year, 4 fishermen have died in New England on the job, and 3 boats out of Point Judith have sank, I think quite a bit about the realities at hand. As someone who is more than a little upset about our system and socio/political conditions in our country I find it ironic that fishermen are ALL independent contractors with NO health insurance, retirement or benefits of any kind. All this and they are 5o times more likely to die on the job than ANY cop in our country. Those stats don't add up for me, and I really hope I don't die for $500/week.

Stacked Four High

Stacked four high, the 75-pound lobster pots rested now on deck of the cold steel Barbara Lynn. 31 of 50 pots had been hauled up from the deep and flowing darkness along with almost a mile’s worth of line, of which, a corner of a short section lay under the concrete runner of the 23rd trap. The combined weights of the pots pressed down on the line, and briny tears of seawater streamed onto the deck.

In the east, the sky was beginning to soften in preparation for the sun, which wouldn’t come for at least an hour yet, and the hydraulic hauler screamed in a spinning frenzy as it pulled the line and pots toward the waiting crew.
Captain Chris deMarco controlled the hydraulic levers, and steered the boat as Enrique waited at the rail for the next pot. From grabbing so many spiny skates used as bait, the thumb and forefinger of Enrique’s gloves had worn small holes and his glove liners were soaked with seawater and the foul juice of the fetid bait. His fingers burned and throbbed and he put his hands together in front of his face and blew on them through habit, though no warmth penetrated the blue vinyl that covered his soft Salvadoran hands.

The green metal wire of a pot appeared and was quickly breaking the surface of the water as the captain stopped the hauler. Enrique grabbed the bridle of the pot with his left hand and smoothly cleared the snood over the block with the other and landed the pot on the rail. In the trap were 23 pounds of Rock Crabs, a small Black Sea Bass, a 2-pound female lobster clad with thousands of eggs, and a 12-pound Conga Eel that angrily writhed in the parlor and shook the pot.
A major storm was forecast to peel up the eastern seaboard beginning that afternoon, so the crew of the Barbara Lynn had worked through the night so they could finish before it got too nasty. 3 men had drained 11 energy drinks in 7 hours. Luis however had found an excuse between each trawl to go into the engine room, where he hid his own way of staying up all night.

After having gotten the bait ready for the next trawl, Luis was now just watching Jesus downstack the pots one by one as they were set back into the icy Atlantic.
“Man, I’m tired”, Jesus huffed.
Luis, in his best American redneck replied,” Son, are you a Mexican, or a Mexi-can’t?”
“I’m Guatemalan esse!”
“ Hey, what do you call a short Mexican?” Luis asked.

Jesus, though perturbed, played along as he grabbed a pot to set it down on the deck “I don’t know, what?” he asked, and the snood he was holding didn’t pull out easily, and as Jesus yanked on it, the ground line streaming out of the rope locker came up in a tangle, and that little piece of line under pot 23 that actually belonged to the 26th pot snagged on a barb of broken wire and began to pull the pot and the three others stacked on top of it, aft. The top pot in the pile tumbled and hit Jesus in the chest as he was bent, still yanking frantically on the line. As it did so, the rest of the pile moved over Jesus as Luis, with his back turned, said “Paragraph. Too short to be an essay.” and Jesus was overboard.
Frantically, with tears welling up, Luis flung the cabin door open. “Jesus, he’s gone! He’s in the water!”

Atlantic Puffins off of RI, (way off!!)

2011-03-02T12:18:00.000-05:00

So, the last trip out on the boat was an eventful one. For most of the winter we concentrate our efforts closer in to shore to target Rock Crabs as our quarry. However, we still have 700 pots in the deepwater near the boat's normal lobstering grounds on Hudson's Canyon. Hudson's Canyon is the remnant outflow of the Hudson River and lies due south from the RI coastline about 100 miles. We haven't checked those lobster pots since the end of November or December as there just aren't enough lobsters around to make the trip all the way down there. Once in a while though we have to go down and make sure everything is still there. The weather can really take its toll on the gear, and it's not uncommon for whole trawls to just disappear. At $100 bucks a pot, and not to mention the mile of rope involved in each trawl that adds up to a lot of money.

So, this last trip we made the long steam to the south. Since there are few lobsters, hauling the gear is a lot easier than when we are working in the crab grounds, so we rotate with everyone getting a trawl off to rest. My trawl off happened to be at sunrise, after having started work at 0300, and there was not a puff of wind in the air. It was gorgeous and I went up on the bow to try and get a photo or two of the many Dovekies that were around. To my surprise and excitement the first bird on the bow happened to be an Atlantic Puffin, and I got to see a few more mixed in with the literally hundreds of Dovekies on the calm sea.
This photo is cropped in as the bird was pretty far away, but you can still see the sweet Puffin bill!!

I then got this photo of two Dovekies taking flight. With their wings made for swimming under water it takes them a lot of flapping and a little extra time to get off the water. Then, it was back to work!

To Tell Or Not To Tell

2011-02-20T10:10:00.000-05:00

Last weekend a friend of mine and I were out birding, and not seeing the King Eider that we were looking for. On our way back home, he got a text about a Saw-whet Owl roosting nearby. We were excited to see it, and it was a lifer for him. We got very precise directions, but upon getting there, it was still difficult to find the owl in the small cedar tree that it was perched in. Saw-whets are small, and this one wasn't moving, in fact it slept the entire time we were there.

The bird was right on a road in Hope Valley, RI, and cars had to slow to pass, even though we were on the side of the narrow road, as the shoulder is comprised of several feet of icy snow. There was no way to look at this bird without drawing attention to it. I was really grateful to have seen the owl and wanted to pass on that experience to other people, but how to do it without risking the bird's safety?
The light was horrible when we were there, and I thought it would be a bad photo op for people. Other photographers have since proven me wrong!!

Sharon Stiteler, aka "birdchick" just write a blog about the same exact thing, how to view an owl without disturbing it. I didn't have internet for a couple of days which allowed me to stew on the issue a little. In the end, I decided to put the bird on the RI list serve without giving directions to the site, and requested interested parties to contact me if they wanted to see it. Only five people ended up getting in touch with me, and of those, only 3 got to see the bird before it left its roost. I know through word of mouth that more people went to look at and photograph the owl, and it's impossible to know how many, and what happened, but the owl is now gone. It turns out that the owl had actually been there since December and that other birders had known about it, and had not told anyone, which was probably why it hung around for so long.

So, am I to blame for its disappearance?? As far as I can tell, I most probably had something to do with it, and that sucks. At the same time, I know that a few people got to see a Saw-whet Owl for the first time in their lives, and I don't know the exact circumstances that caused the owl to move. Maybe it was totally unrelated. Maybe not. I imagine I will be blamed by some for this, probably the birders who knew about it initially and didn't tell anyone. It's always an issue whether or not to make sensitive bird sightings public or not. Had I not told anyone, come springtime when everyone hears about the Saw-whet Owl that no one got to see I would have been accused of keeping it to myself and not sharing, which, if harm did come to the owl because of this, is of course a much better outcome than having birders cause stress for the owl. Personally, I hope that the bird moved off of the road and a little further from the danger posed by automobiles, but I will never know for sure if I am the reason behind the bird's disappearance, and what the factors were behind it.

On a side note, I also struck out looking for a male Eurasian Green-winged Teal in Westerly, but I did get to be closer to a White-winged Scoter than I had ever been and managed a few shots in the waning light.

First Annual AWA Birdathon!!!!!

2011-02-09T07:53:00.000-05:00

This week I had the great opportunity to participate in the Alamos Wildlands Alliance's, (AWA) first annual birdathon. With my fishing schedule, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to fit it in, so I only got two donors, so far, including myself. Either way, I had a great day, and I'm pretty sure that AWA was able to raise some funds for their very important work with other birders participating across the country and in Mexico. The Alamos Wildlands Alliance is a conservation organization based in Southern Sonora, Mexico where many of our North American birds winter or pass through on their way further south. Little is known about the very important cactus forest habitat where AWA's Navopatia Field Station is located, and AWA's research is already illuminating new and key aspects of avian ecology in the region. With decreased trade regulations and increased incentives for investment in Mexico, much of the US's need for vegetables and other industry is putting a commensurate amount of pressure on Mexico's important habitats. AWA is doing whatever they can to put the spot light on conserving a much overlooked habitat, and is even in negotiations to try and purchase a large tract of undeveloped Pitahaya cactus forest near their field station.

My day started early as I tried in vain to pick up some owl species along Rhode Island's southern coast. Nobody was calling in the frigid morning air, but I was rewarded with the experience of hearing a buck marking its territory by crashing against some nearby trees. The noise carried through the crisp air like a frenetic drum solo without rhythm.

From owling, I switched the task to finding water fowl which proved to come with its own set of problems. During the drive I hit a few roadside spots and picked up some goodies like Belted Kingfisher, Rough-legged Hawk and Purple Finch. As the weather has been consistently cold for so long, many of the normally open bodies of water were frozen over. Places where Eurasian Wigeon were reported recently were all covered with ice. My first stop was the Charlestown Breachway where I got lucky with a small group of Long-tailed Ducks floating with some Common Eider. I also got to see my first Dunlin of the year here, and over 20 Common Loons riding the outgoing tide out through the jetties and into the ocean.

After the breachway I went to the marsh in hopes of picking up some more water birds, but also both Saltmarsh and Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrows had been seen just a few days before. I struck out on the sparrows but got lucky with flyover Brown-headed Cowbirds, Horned Larks and one American Pipit. While in the Succotash Marsh I also got lucky with two Double-crested Cormorants in the harbor of Galilee, and increasingly difficult bird to see in RI in the winter.

After the marsh I decided to go eat lunch on the lobster boat that I work on, as there was a bunch of leftover food from the last trip that needed to be eaten. From the wheelhouse of the boat I got to see the first year Glaucous Gull that's been hanging around the port. It was a very convenient way to add another bird to the list. From the boat, I drove west toward Charlestown again and the small area known as Quonachotoag, the well known location of Mulder's summer house in the TV show the X-files. A bald Eagle had been reported here earlier in the month, and there could be a few other goodies as well. The Eagle was gone, but a few Northern Harriers graced me with their lofty flight, and again I saw many Common Loons riding the tide.

From here I went to Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge where I found all of the hiding ducks. There were hundreds of Bufflehead, Hooded and Red-breasted Mergansers, and other species scattered around in the huge rafts of noisy ducks. Just as I trained my scope on one of the groups it erupted into flight and anxious voice. Not many birds can push so many ducks into such a frenzy and I immediately started searching for an eagle, which was not hard to see, though it was over 400 meters away. Only my second Bald Eagle in the state of RI, this crisply plumaged adult powered after these ducks in several flights but was not fast or crafty enough to come away with a meal. As I was watching the eagle, a Lesser Black-backed Gull flew overhead and perched out on a point, allowing scope views. It was great stop, and I was feeling pretty good about the day. It was just about then that the rain and the wind started.

I decided to travel over to Newport where Short-eared Owls and a Barn Owl have been regular, and where a King Eider had been seen recently. The weather did not cooperate however, and I missed everything, but ended the day with a great, but wet look at 14 Purple Sandpipers. It seemed that the birds had the right idea, hunkering down out of the weather, and I retreated to do the same. The idea of hooting at owls to finish off the day was out of the question! All in all I had a great time, and remembered once again why it is so important to support groups like AWA who are on the front lines trying to save the remaining habitats that our beloved birds so desperately depend on. REad more about the birdathon on AWA's blog.

Complete List of Species Seen
1. Brant
2. Canada Goose
3. Mute Swan
4. Gadwall
5. American Wigeon
6. American Black Duck
7. Mallard
8. Greater Scaup
9. Common Eider
10. Surf Scoter
11. Black Scoter
12. White-winged Scoter
13. Long-tailed Duck
14. Bufflehead
15. Common Goldeneye
16. Hooded Merganser
17. Red-breasted Merganser
18. Ruddy Duck
19. Common Loon
20. Red-throated Loon
21. Horned Grebe
22. Double-crested Cormorant
23. Great Cormorant
24. Great Blue Heron
25. Bald Eagle
26. Cooper’s Hawk
27. Red-tailed Hawk
28. Sanderling
29. Purple Sandpiper
30. Dunlin
31. Ring-billed Gull
32. Herring Gull
33. Glaucous Gull
34. Great Black-backed Gull
35. Lesser Black-backed Gull
36. Pigeon
37. Mourning Dove
38. Belted Kingfisher
39. Red-bellied Woodpecker
40. Blue Jay
41. American Crow
42. Horned Lark
43. Black-capped Chickadee
44. Tufted Titmouse
45. White-breasted Nuthatch
46. Carolina Wren
47. Northern Mockingbird
48. American Robin
49. European Starling
50. American Pipit
51. Yellow-rumped Warbler
52. Eastern Towhee
53. American Tree Sparrow
54. Field Sparrow
55. Savannah Sparrow
56. Song Sparrow
57. White-throated Sparrow
58. White-crowned Sparrow
59. Dark-eyed Junco
60. Northern Cardinal
61. House Finch
62. Purple Finch
63. American Goldfinch
64. Common Grackle
65. Brown-headed Cowbird
66. House Sparrow

A Few Photos From My Last Two Trips Out To Sea

2011-01-29T23:49:00.000-05:00

I'm heading out in the morning for another three day trip. Usually we leave at night to arrive at our crabbing grounds by early morning, but this trip we are going down to our deepwater lobster gear further away, and we are leaving during the day, which means I get to bird on the way out. I'm pretty excited about that. I'm really hoping to see a Dovekie within Rhode Island state waters for my year list.

Here are a few photos from the last two trips. During the last trip, the temperatures were in the single digits and everything was frozen, including boogers and beardcicles!!

Deck Boss Chris Wroblewski chips at ice on the tanks at sunrise.

A full load of three trawls heading toward the crabbing grounds. Along with the 150 pots is over 3 miles of line connecting the pots within each trawl. Miraculously, it all went back into the ocean without a single snag!

Frozen Bait that had to be chipped out before we put it in the pots. It was real cold. Seriously.

Transit deckhand Bert downstacks a trawl at sunset.

This Northern Gannet came in for a close look at the boat. Gannets are frickin' cool!

It glided down for a shallow dive, and you can see how its tail feathers parted the face of the wave as it slid in.

Sunrises on the sea are almost always amazing.

Close Encounters of the Bird Kind...

2011-01-23T06:39:00.000-05:00

As a field biologist I have had the privilege of engaging many birds on a close and personal level while studying them. Last week, while on the boat out at sea in a random event, I got to hold one of my favorite birds in the world, the Dovekie!! What has always amazed me is just how different certain birds behave in the hand, and at times I feel that it gives a certain insight into the bird's demeanor. This kind of talk is difficult as it relies on a certain amount of anthropomorphizing of these wild creatures, but that's how we understand certain things outside of our realm, we compare them to our own realities.

One of my favorite species of bird to encounter in the hand is the Wilson's Warbler. Almost without fail, the Wilson's Warbler is beyond calm as they are removed from the net, and seem to have an amazing patience while being poked, prodded and measured. In their preferred habitat however, they are quick to scold, skulky and difficult to approach.

There seems to be little correlation that I can find as to how birds behave in the hand, and what they do in the wild. While it's true that all birds are relatively high strung when compared to humans, and most birds in the hand behave as they should when a predator has them in their grips, sometimes birds will surprise you and make you question what you thought you knew.

While in the Gulf during the BP Oil Disaster people that I spoke with who had rescued Brown Pelicans time and again reiterated something that I had heard about Pelicans previously. While they are difficult to capture initially, once in the hand, it's as if they know you are there to help. Maybe their calmness is a way of preserving energy and can be explained in purely scientific terms as a means of self preservation, but when you are holding a bird and open to certain emotions and feelings, sometimes it just feels like the bird knows that you aren't there to harm them.

The first Saw-whet Owl that I banded at the Idaho Bird Observatory in 1997 did something that I will never forget. After taking all of its measurements and weighing it, I went out into the dark, Idaho night to release it. As I opened my hands to let it go, it perched on my hand, and then flew onto my shoulder. I walked back over to the banding shed, where they were still processing another owl, while the Saw-whet remained on my shoulder. It stayed there, alert, and constantly moving its head and looking around, and seemingly unafraid of me as I checked it out, eye to eye. As they finished up the other owl and released it, the owl on my shoulder flew off into a nearby Douglas Fir with the other bird and let out a little chirp. It was as if the owl on my shoulder was just waiting for its companion.

Back to the Dovekie. We had finished up working for the night, and had actually already eaten dinner and the other deckhand was out on deck having a cigarette. He said that he turned around, and a Dovekie was sitting on the banding table. He opened the door and yelled in, "Hey Drew, I've got one of your birds out here." I was thinking that maybe a Gull was on the boat, or something, and he said, " no, it's one of your little penguin-like guys," and I ran out there to check it out. Sure enough, Mike, the big, gruff fisherman was cradling a little Dovekie in his arms like a baby. He handed him over to me, and immediately I could sense the bird's distress. It did not want to be held, and it was constantly struggling, and I knew I had to release it as soon as possible. I felt the bird's sternum, and checked its short, sturdy wings for injury, and finding nothing walked over to the rail and opened my hands, and it flew off into the night. I didn't even get a photo!

While handling birds can be amazing, it is a privilege that should be practiced with the utmost caution and only when a very specific, scientifically meaningful and conservation based reason has been established. The experience of holding a cuddly bird in the hand is uniquely amazing, and can be a life changing and eye opening event. In my opinion there is a lot of unnecessary handling of birds that happens simply because people enjoy holding soft, colorful and vibrant little birdies.

The Sky is falling. Why Birds might rain down on the earth.

2011-01-04T06:59:00.000-05:00

Some birds are very high strung, some are less hardy, some birds are very mellow and downright friendly. Bird's dispositions are varied and run the spectrum much like human personalities. I have held and studied thousands of different birds of many, many species and families, including lots of Icterids, (blackbirds) and some Starlings. With this in mind, I find it very unlikely that a noise or disturbance could have caused the demise of the Beebe, AR birds alone. I also think it unlikely that these birds were flying over the town in a nocturnal migration at the time of their fatal fall. While many birds migrate in the night, including blackbirds, and I am not an expert in movements of southeastern Icterids in the winter months, but I would guess that for the most part, long distance, night time migrating is over, and that these large flocks are moving from food source to food source, and roosting in large groups. I may be wrong on that, but I don't think so.

What I think people ought to be talking about more is the weather system moving through the area at the time. Although radar maps show that at the exact time of the incident there was not a strong cell over the exact area, a VERY strong front had just passed through, the same one that had spawned over 20 tornados in a rare weather event in the state of Arkansas earlier that day. Tornados very frequently pick items, and organisms up and deposit them elsewhere. I also think it feasible that extreme pressure changes and other potential weather related factors could have combined to cause any number of scenarios in which a large flock of birds could have met their untimely fates. I would not rule out a combination of noise disturbance and weather, nor would I rule out poisoning and weather combinations, or some freaky government experimentation.

It sure is weird that on the same day thousands of fish died nearby in the Arkansas River, and that cities all over United States are experiencing large numbers of birds, mostly blackbirds, dying in similarly inexplicable ways. There is a lot of speculation on the conspiracy chat rooms and websites about the potential causes and meanings of all of this. The theories range from the end of the world and polar shifts to the government's HAARP project causing atmospheric anomalies which combined to kill these birds.

I'm at a loss, and after seeing first hand in the Gulf what our government and media are capable of, I am not about to rule ANYTHING out. It is a strange phenomenon that's for sure, and I hope that all of the attention these incidents are receiving means that there will be widespread scrutiny of the causes and work done to find the causes, whatever they may be. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out, maybe??

I'm headed out to sea, in fact, writing this blog from the wheelhouse of the F.V. Timberwolf, be back on Friday, hope the world is still here, and that the government hasn't HAARPed every living creature by the time I get back, or that 2012 doesn't come early, or...(enter own doomsday scenario here). I was going to write about personal experiences with certain birds, including Dovekies and Green-tailed Towhees to illustrate the differences in bird demeanor, but that'll have to wait until Friday. Have a great couple of days!!

Windows of Opportunity

2010-12-30T14:25:00.000-05:00

First, I have to once more engage my lack of escritorial productivity in the past couple of months (apparently escritorial is not a word, but I thought it ought to be). What I mean by that is my lack of published words since I've left the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Not only have I been fighting with a real lack of inspiration stemming from the realization of just how dark the relationships between Big Oil, Big Government and Big Media are, not to mention the complacency of the American public, but I am also constantly stymied by the mountains of unfinished projects and loose ends associated with my time down there. That being said, I think the universal post solstice energy is helping to push me though the mud and into a new era of productivity. And with that, back to the cold, Rhode Island winter:

In my last blog I talked about the windows of opportunity in which we have to go out and ply the Atlantic in search of lobsters and crabs. More often than not, on either end of our trip out we are assailed with strong winds and nasty seas which make it unpleasant to be on a boat. As a surfer though, it means that we are usually back on land when there are waves, which is a high priority for myself and the Captain of the boat, Jamie Risser. Jamie and I have known each other since we were tow headed grommets hanging around the pier and getting into trouble. Jaime and I are tight, in fact it was Jamie's arms which comforted one of my first loves when I went away to college.

Jamie has been fishing since we were kids as well. When most of us were enjoying a more carefree life, Jamie was following his Dad who was a commercial fisherman in Point Judith, and from a young age, Jamie earned respect from the older fishermen of the point. So, even though he's a couple of years younger than me, I can't imagine another captain that I would feel safer with on the ocean, not to mention singing Madonna at 0430 in 10 foot seas with ice on the deck.

So, Jamie and I have surfed nearly all of our lives. He is probably one of the most respected surfers in the Northeast, and it's always exciting to watch him going down the line. Working on the boat is pretty hard, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't hurt from the sheer physicality of it, but working with such a good friend, someone who sees the world as I do really makes it doable. Not that I have a whole lot of choice right now, though I suppose I could claim bankruptcy, but that's not really all that kosher. Not that spending my tax money on killing brown people to make oil barons richer instead of on education and conservation is kosher, but...

Not only does the elevated sea state give us some enjoyment, but it also makes it difficult for rock dwelling birds like the Purple Sandpiper to forage. On this particular day, Purple Sandpipers were pushed nearly into the parking lots to find anything to eat, as the high tides and big waves combined to cover most of their habitat. I even saw some foraging on the sand, which for Purple Sandpipers is pretty weird.

>Deckhand Chris Wroblewski puts some of the days catch down into the live tank.

Going Down

2010-12-01T09:19:00.000-05:00

11/27/10

We left the dock at 11:00 AM, with a strong southwest wind agitating the Great Salt Pond and straining the many flags around Point Judith. The wind was so strong, in fact, that the wavelets being created lapped up and over the bulkhead at Rhode Island Engine and sprayed deep into the parking lot. A quick perusal of the nearby Gulls failed to turn up the first year Glaucous Gull that had been hanging around for the past ten days or so, but it might still be there.

We threw the lines, and made our way into the harbor, and as I stood on deck the wind went right through me. Since I hadn't expected to be in Rhode Island this winter I have none of my winter clothing and am ill equipped to say the least for a four day trip deep into the north Atlantic Ocean. I had woken with the beginnings of a cough, but had been in such a hurry to get ready for the trip and say goodbye to family visiting for Thanksgiving I had not time to address this burgeoning potential health issue, yet there I stood in the frigid wind, now surrounded by water, quite noticeably coughing. Little did I know at the time, that in my rush, I had also forgotten a good deal of the warm clothing that I do have.

When looking out at the North Atlantic from shore in the winter, it is a rare thing to see a placid ocean, rarer indeed would be to see the phenomenon last for three days, which is how many days we need to work out at sea. The time of a boat captain in New England in the winter revolves around the four o'clock updates on NOAA's marine forecast which constantly changes. We have seen that we can't rely on NOAA to accurately and competently report on the level of oil in and around the Gulf of Mexico, or in seafood for that matter, but they remain the only source for a decent marine forecast, and our very lives depend on their daily prognoses. It is very common for us to steam out in a gail, and return in a gail with the hopes that we might cram 50 or more hours of work into a less tumultuous window of agreeable weather.

Last Saturday we left at 1100 AM with the calculation that the wind should drop out just in time for us to reach our fishing grounds at midnight, one hundred miles to the south and get some work done in a nicer environment.

We exited the Harbor of Refuge and made our way into the open ocean in a wet and wild ride. Everything on deck had been tied down in preparations, and as we made our turn through the opening in the breakwater we braced ourselves for the inevitable crash and boom as the first waves hit us, and blew up and over the boat. A large group of Common Eiders was up against the wall, right in the maelstrom of the crashing waves on the west side of the rock formation, but they seemed to be unconcerned with their situation, and bobbed and dove with an ease that spoke of a great comfortability being out in the cold Atlantic, even against the wall. The males are really starting to look handsome again as the soft seafoam green takes over the dappled brown basic plumage on their roman heads. Content with one last view of these ducks and a flyby Long-tailed Duck, I retired to the bunk, where the other two deck hands were already sound asleep. Although it was mid-day, sleep came easy, as it usually does on the boat, even when it's rocking and rolling! You've got to get it when you can, and the body quickly becomes accustomed to taking advantage of any time in the bunk.

Within 20 minutes on deck, I had been soaked by an errant wave. All barrels on the port rail were instantly filled, and random gear was thrust toward the center of the boat with the thousands of gallons of seawater that exploded passed us, and filled my boots. I was able to change two and half hours later. At 0200 the next morning I awoke after 2 hours of sleep with the second scariest fever I have ever had, and was unable to work for the first three hours of Monday. When I finally made it out on deck, it was gorgeous. The sea had calmed down and was completely glassy. The other deckhands were working in T-shirts in the end of November! I felt horrible, but my spirits were uplifted by the occasional small groups of Dovekies that the boat happened upon. Dovekies are a really neat bird, and are one of my favorite little guys. So small, yet so hardy, these tiny little "penguins of the north" ply their livings in the harshest of environments, and I'm always amazed by their seeming nonchalant demeanor.

The next couple of days were spent in a fever induced haze, and by the time we had unloaded our catch on Wednesday morning, I would spend 65 of the next 72 hours of my life in bed thinking about the Northern Fulmars and Great Shearwaters that glide so effortlessly passed our boat as we work, and hoping that I'll be ready to go next week, when it's time to go back out on the cold Atlantic.