FreeLists / bristol-birds / [Bristol-Birds] Gull rocket net arrives, project moves ahead

[Wallace Coffey <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Bristol Area Birders:

The arrival of Ken Hale to our gull banding project turned everything around
almost overnight.  You have probably  read a lot of fun jokes and comments
about the "trap master" but his knowledge and skills with trapping anything
and everything has been well known to most of us for a quarter of a century.

Ken was a former White-tailed Deer trapper and Wild Turkey trapper for the
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.  In addition, he spent years with the
Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries as the manger of Laurel Bed
Lake and the Clinch Valley Wildlife Management Area in Southwest Virginia.  

So it was a tremendous boost when he took time from a busy life as a very
successful lawyer and father of three little girls to jump back into our
bird trapping and banding program.  He had long been successful as a hawk
bander with us a quarter of a century ago.

He offered his talents to us on Tuesday evening.  By Wednesday morning his
game plan included contacting 
H. Christiansen Net Co,  a major builder and provider of professionally
built wildlife nets of all kind.

In just hours Mark Burns, their expert on rocket nets and bird nets of all
kinds, had their crew busy building us a 25 foot by 30 foot rocket net at
their company in Duluth, MN.   The net arrvied by UPS on Friday and our team
met at Ken's home to begin work.  Well into the night we had completed a
shopping trip to purchase air lines, valves and fittings of all kinds.  The
launch tubes were finished.  The air tank was brought in and progress was
being made. The big net was unpacked and spread to cover much of Ken's
garage floor.  Our hands were soon busy cutting, fitting and working to
complete Ken's concept of an air-launched system that would carry the net
into the air and over a flock of Ring-billed Gulls.

And, at least, we will have it to press into service on birds of prey,
shorebirds and other species we will want to band in the coming months.  

We invite you to visit the Bristol Birds Net Photo Gallery located at:

http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jwcoffeyy/album?.dir=/efd5

and you will be able to see the last two photos of the net being inspected
for use and the air-powered lanuch system construction mostly completed by
Saturday.

Rack Cross, Sam Cross and I spent much of Saturday looking for gull
populations in the Bristol area.  The high pressure and warm weather seemed
to have played a role in putting them out of sight.  We found about 90 birds
at Clear Creek Lake but the parking lots everywhere were mostly empthy.  We
hope the high pressure system and warming trend into the 60s did not flush
much of our population back towards their northern breeding ground before we
can make larger captures and banding.  If so, we will have to work with what
is left and wait on next winter to get the big numbers we had hoped for this
year.

The final stages of our rocket net system are virtually complete.  We need a
couple of more steps to rig it all and run a few tests before we take it
afield for capture.

This has been a rewarding and exciting project so far.  We have learned a
lot and it has been enjoyable every day in all kinds of challenging weather.
Maybe there will be more before the season opportunity is gone.

Let's go birding.....

Wallace Coffey
Bristol






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and Northeast Tennessee.  
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