FreeLists / bristol-birds / [Bristol-Birds] Re: more Carter Co. sapsuckers (with background)

["Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Bristol Area Birders:
Don Holt's discover of an active nest of the Appalachian Yellow-bellied
Sapsucker in Carter Co., TN and then, a few days later, finding young out of
the nest at another location, not far away with the help of Tom McNeil, are
significant discoveries for Tennessee ornithology.

To the best of my knowledge,  it may have been nearly 30 to 50 years since
an active nest cavity has been found in Tennessee.  If anyone knows of
anything more recent, please let me know.  Dr. Fred Alsop provided
information in 1980 that the bird had nested in Unicoi County in Northeast
Tennessee.  I do not have a copy of that report published with Bob Hatcher,
I think, by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.  The year 1980 was the
publication date but I am not sure it is close to the actual date of the
nest in Unicoi County.  Several nest of these rare breeding season
woodpeckers have been found in the state during the past century but most
reports came in the early half of 20th century.

Even the discovery of fledged young has been seldom reported.

Rick Knight reported an adult Yellow-bellied Sapsucker with 2 recently
fledged young,  3 July 2001 Stone Mtn., near Vaught Gap, in southern Johnson
Co.
He saw a second pair in the same area.  Kinight reported that sighting
represented the first confirmed breeding in northeast Tenn. In fact, he
wrote, there are only 4 previous summer records going back to 1895.

Now Don Holt has added two more summer records which are also two breeding
records, nearly three years later.

One of TOS's five founders,  Albert F. Ganier of Nashville, described a new
subspecies of the sapsucker in THE MIGRANT in 1954.  The typce specimen came
from the Unicoi Mountains of Monroe County, TN.  He called it the
Appalachian Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.  We hope that soon-to-be-conducted DNA
studies will shed more light on this unique southern population.

A group of scientists and resource managers from North Carolina, Tennessee,
and Virginia have been evaluating the conservation status of the Appalachian
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in cooperation with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service.  Among those involved in this ad hoc working group from Tennessee
are Joe McGuiness, US Forest Service, Chuck Nicholson, Tennessee Valley
Authority, Wallace Coffey - Tennessee Partners In Flight, Chair, Southern
Blue Ridge,  Keith Langdon - NPS Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Don
Holt attended last fall's committee meeting and has conducted field
searches.  David Vogt has joined in field searching this breeding season.

You may read more about the sapsucker taskforce work and see a distribution
map at :  http://biology.mhc.edu/ybsa/

Let's go birding....

Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN

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