summer birding highlights

The summer was full of birds.  The warm summer months of July and August brought a huge variety of shore birds, especially in August when the shore bird migration starts back down south.  July was nothing to write home about, but once August began the birds were almost falling from the sky.  Luckily, none were injured.

In the second week of August, the local bird club traveled to Fairhaven, Mass, along the coast to look for shorebirds.  To our benefit it was low tide in the morning.  Low tide is the perfect time to look for shorebirds.  As the tide goes out, it uncovers mudflats and - more importantly - an array of creatures that shorebirds like to eat.

The day was filled with a variety of shorebirds, which included the sighting of over 40 Semipalmated Plovers.  Along with the Semipalmated Plovers were two Black-bellied Plovers, Spotted Sandpipers, Greater Yellowlegs, Willets, Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings, Least Sandpiper, and a Dowitcher.

Also during the morning we saw a Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Green Heron, and a rare bird for the area: a juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron.

With the many shorebirds, rare sightings, and life birds, it was a great morning for birding.

Bird of the week: Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Life birds: Saltmarsh Sparrow, Spotted Sandpiper, Semipalmated Plover, Sanderling, Least Sandpiper, Black-bellied Plover, and a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

one trillion dollars: cue pinkie to mouth

One trillion dollars is a lot of money.  So much money that you could buy everyone in the state of California a Subaru, and still have money left over.  Fox News has claimed that the Obama stimulus package will actually cost more than the eight-year Iraq War.  These accusations, although most definitely false, do assert that the stimulus bill is a lot of money – hundreds of billions of dollars.  However, I don’t think the stimulus bill is a good comparison to the Iraq war.  I mean, the Bush Administration tried several stimulus packages, but those are not talked about in the comparison.  And of course we don’t know what Republicans would have done if they had a majority in office.  Maybe they would have implemented a stimulus similar to the Bush Administration. The accusations about the stimulus seem to be more over politics than anything else.  Similarly, the Democrats made an outcry over the Bush stimulus.  In addition, Republicans, even if they did provide another stimulus, would not have spent as much money as the Democrats, right?

I think a better comparison would be to compare the Iraq War with the new Health Care bill.  Both are stated to cost around one trillion dollars.  And both Democrats and Republicans seem to reprove the decision of the other.  The choice is then between an unwinnable, unjustified, fake war, that was started under false pretenses of securing WMD that never existed, or a bill that is helping millions of people have health care coverage that normally would not have it.

Now I am not going to get into all the reasons why people hate the Health Care bill.  You know forcing people to have health coverage, a trillion dollars of tax payer’s money going to “welfare health care patrons”, etcetera.  Nor am I going to get into why the Health Care Bill is good: it covers donut holes, pre-existing coverage, and gives people a chance to have health care when they’ve never had a chance before.  Nope, not going to do that.  Just the basics.  If you had one trillion dollars and you could spend it on either the Iraq War or health care, which would you choose?  And no, the money couldn’t be spent on option C - the improvement of public education.   Or option D – not spending the money in the first place.  Then the American taxpayers could do what they do best – spend the money on themselves.