[Bristol-Birds] Birding status, abundance, purpose of new Knight book.

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  The Birds of Northeast Tennessee

The purpose of Rick Knight's much-anticipated new book is to summarize the 
seasonal status and abundance of birds in Northeast Tennessee. 

Thumbing the pages of this Second Edition, you will find the annotated checklist
contains accounts of 319 species of birds regarded as naturally occurring in the
counties of Carter, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi and Washington. This is 
a gain of 21 species in the 14 years since publication of the first edition in 
1994.

Records are complete through mid June 2008.  

The brief individual species accounts state seasonal status and abundance. 
Elevational distribution, highest counts, out of season reports, or other 
notations 
which are included for most species. 

One of the most popular and useful sections is the bar graphs of seasonal 
occurrence, with extreme arrival and departure dates where relevant.


There was much excitement when the 1994 edition was 
first dedicated at the 50th anniversary of the Herndon TOS 
Chapter in Johnson City in May 1994 when the book was 
rolled out.  A great crowd of birders from across the state 
was on hand for the TOS Annual State Meeting held at 
the Holiday Inn on North Roan St.


It was only a few years and copies began to become scarce.  
When birders first realized this was happening there was a scramble to get a 
copy as it became apparent the book would be out of print and no longer 
available 
to new and old birders.  

Among the most often asked questions in regional birding:

    1.  Where can I get a copy of Rick Knight's book ?
    2.  Why don't they reprint it ?
    3.  When will he publish an updated edition?

Rick frequently responded that he planned to update the 1994 edition about
20 years after its publication date.  That would have put us out to about 2014.
However, he soon decided new species, new records and changing
status of species could not wait that long.

He announced a little more than four years ago that his work on the revised
edition was underway.  By May 1 of this year, he had a first draft ready to
send out for comments.

Bill Grigsby said he saw a few copies of the 1994 edition for sale at Sycamore 
Shoals State Park and bought them all.  I remember getting the last few copies 
Knight could spare.  When I found several copies on the natural
history shelves at the Blooming Book Store in Elizabethton, I bought them all.  

That was years ago and I have never seen another copy.  I did notice that one 
or two
had turned up on Amazon.com but soon gone.  The site still list the book but 
indicates
"Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in 
stock."
Buteo Books in Shipman, Va carried the title in its catalogue as did the 
American 
Birding Association until their last books were gone.

Anyone who has the 1994 first edition should hang on to it for dear life.  So 
much
has changed in the nearly 15 years since that book was published by the Bristol
Bird Club.  It will always be a great comparison to how bird populations have
changed during that time across the 1,585 square miles of Northeast Tennessee
and its population of 362,500.

Even a simple comparison of species in the bar graphs is a testimony to the 
changing
patterns of bird migration and their first and last dates by seasons.

The 1994 edition is a benchmark in the history of Northeast Tennessee bird 
study.
Knight has used the many years of bird data which have been accumulated in this
region during the past 122 years since the first bird observations were 
recorded for the
area.  You will find species accounts for nearly two dozen species which were 
not 
known as naturally occurring in the region 15 years ago.

The explosion of wintering waterbird records in the past two decades at areas 
such as
Middlebrook Lake, the South Holston River Weir Dams and Musick's Campground on
South Holston Lake has been dramatic.  Several new species have invaded the 
region
along the tributaries of the Holston, spreading upstream from Kingsport.  Much 
has
been discovered about some of the fascinating species which have migrated and
nested in Shady Valley -- the state's high valley.

Owls, hummingbirds, thrushes, warblers and finches have extended their ranges 
in the
region we know as Northeast Tennessee.  The efforts to seek out nesting 
populations
of the sapsucker and others have provided a changing avifauna that is 
significant and
sometimes amazing.

It is worthy to remember that some species accounts may have changed completely
since 1994 and the Second Edition modern-knowledge version no longer reports 
some of
the records or status important in 1994 but surpassed by the new status for 
occurrence
and distribution.  You will never have a good fix on that if  you let the 1994 
edition slip away.

And if you own an author autographed copy from May 1994, it is a collector's 
item.  You can
never recover that original and historic moment.

Your next great moment to link to the past is:

        Tuesday,  August 19, 2008
        Steele Creek Nature Center and Park Conference Room
        Steele Creek Park, Bristol, TN
        Bristol Bird Club - author party and book distribution
        7:30 p.m. 
        Dutch dinner Mad Greek, Volunteer Pky, Bristol TN at 6:00 p.m.

Let's go birding......

Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN

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