FreeLists / bristol-birds / [Bristol-Birds] Re: First Young Mockers in Buchanan

["Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Roger Mayhorn and Area Birders,

I will take a chance speculating why the mockingbird  has expanded its range to 
include heavily forested Buchanan County.

First, congratulations on filling in another gap in our aviabase of bird 
distribution in the region.  It is a significant contribution.  You guys have 
been well focused on a good local distribution problem.  You kept your minds on 
the question and your mind was prepared when the chances presented themselve (a 
Pasture belief).

Mockers have been extending their range slowly north for much of the last 
century.  The surrounding mountain counties in Kentucky and West Virginia are 
about as void of mockingbirds as is Buchanan County.  The rest of Southwest 
Virginia is getting extension of range from lower drainage influnces to the 
south and east such as the Tennessee River and New River where the mockingbird 
population is more dense. 

I think the bigger picture is that Buchanan Co. is not as much influenced by 
most of the same factors as some of its neighboring counties in Southwest 
Virginia.  That explains, in my view, why Russell and even Tazewell counties 
have more mockingbirds. 

It appears that some of your bird distribution issues may be closer connected 
to the influnce of the Big Sandy River drainage of Kentucky.  Russell, Wise, 
etc. are in the Upper Tennessee River Basin and the Virginia Cumberlands.  

Mockingbirds are more abundant and wider distributed in Tennessee than in 
Kentucky.

Often, when a species extends it range north it moves up the rivers and 
drainages.  When a northern species extends south it comes down the mountain 
ridges.  

The mocker is at its greatest abundance in the lowlands, particularly in 
tidewater and piedmont.  Its upper altitudinal distribution range is about 
3,000 feet elevation.  So you can share our pleasure when 18 May 2005, Mike 
Hagy, Randy Smith, Ron Harrington and myself had a Northern Mockingbird in 
Burke's Garden.

I would simply venture that your lack of mockingbirds is because you are so 
much more like your surrounding areas of West Virgnia and particularly 
Kentucky. 

Maybe your breeding mockers have "hopped" over into your mountain top area of 
the Big Sandy and it's Levisa and Tug forks, etc.  The mocker is extremely 
sparse all around you in the Kentuck counties of Pike, Letcher, Knott, Floyd 
and Martin. I doubt if there is a breeding record in any of the Eastern 
Kentucky counties near you other than Floyd.  It is almost as scare in 
McDowell, Wyoming and Mercer counties of West Virginia.

Brainard Palmer-Ball, Jr. states that the mocker will nest wherever it finds 
land distrubted by man and, today, is restricted to such areas.  He says it has 
likely increased dramatically in response to human alteration of the landscape. 
 He says it is rarely reported  from forested areas but has occupied abandoned 
farmland, rural roadways and reclaimed surface mines.  

"In heavily forested areas, mockingbirds seem to be restricted to opnings 
surrounding rural homsteads," Palmer-Ball, Jr. wrote (1996).

Perhaps that explains why your breeding mockers are in your opening on your 
ridgetop in the tree in your yard :-)

Whatever,  enjoy and great work !

Let's go birding.....

Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN