[Bristol-Birds] Birds of Northeast Tennessee -- "excitement keeps building"
- From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:45:21 -0400
Area Birders,
I opened my mailbox today and found yet another check and
contribution to help fund Rick Knight's "Second Edition" of
The Birds of Northeast Tennessee. It was quite a rush.
A small note was inspiring. It challenges our leadership team
to continue pressing on with increased adrenaline:
The team assisting Rick Knight with all of the
many details and tasks of publishing the regional
annotated checklist to the five county area, worked
late tonight. Another three-hour work session was filled
with creativity, decision making, brainstorming and hard
work.
The Bristol Bird Club's fundraising for this costly project
has finally turned the corner towards reality. We now
can see the road ahead. It is doable. A long ways
to go. It is growing more realistic.
Pledges and donations continued to come in from
near and far -- sometimes hundreds of miles away.
We have dedicated our hearts and souls to more than
a hundred pages of detailed records about the status
and history of regional birding. We have committed our
vision to a rainbow of color pages throughout. We
will have the ability to print every page in full
color. We are harnessed only by our good judgment,
creativity, significant art and dollars stretched thin.
We are delivering the rainbow end to end, the best
we can.
It was exciting tonight as Dr. Fred Alsop sent very
historic and beautiful photos of dramatic species.
The author of the Smithsonian Handbooks' Birds of
North America has contributed to the region's book.
Rick Phillips arrived with a DVD full of images. The
Ron Carrico collections of documentary photos
arrived. The dramatic and artistic images of wildlife
photographer Adam Campbell were made available.
Knight and Wallace Coffey finally completed and
sorted their most important images from searches of
their collections dating back decades.
We have now secured a major fundraising appointment
next week in Kingsport -- thanks to Zellie Earnest and
Bill Grigsby. This is a critical crossroads. Coffey and
Grigsby will make the call.
Only acknowledgements and a few other housekeeping
items for the text are yet to come. After final rounds
of photo selection, a great number of significant
cutlines must be researched and written.
Tom McNeil has completed the almost mind-boggling
and eye-straining remake of the famous season
occurrence tables which have been so cherished for
nearly two decades. Nearly a dozen pages of charts
for 319 species, including the rounds of editing and
corrections, have been completed. It has taken weeks
and weeks. His work is finished.
Rob Biller finalized the redesign of the region map
with increased detail and beautiful multi-colors that
add significantly to this edition. His skills and
talent, not to mention his speed, has been wonderful.
The cover design and templates for pages created much
excitement. We have enjoyed the first brush at nearly
20 pages of design.
Mike Poe's long hours of tedious design and creative
imagination has surfaced beautifully. It has become the
absolutely unexpected surprise in the process. It is so
different than anything we've known.
We realize the "excitement keeps building" and the
gravity of team decisions, keen eyes on every image,
the minutia of details in records and content, all have
caused many extra heart beats as team members
stare down our all-time challenge in regional bird
book production. We gain the wind at our backs with
each exciting discovery of the vast talents of our many
birders.
The team takes every decision very seriously and
with a great sense of knowing that we must produce.
We must put our talents where you have put your
dollars. We must deliver quality and content like
you have not enjoyed before, You expect that.
You are writing checks and making pledges and
making commitments to the birding of Northeast
Tennessee, Rick Knight, and birders old and new
and some not yet born.
Our printer continues to handle our walk-in visits,
telephone calls and dozens of critical questions
about how to bring the technology together with
our imagination and our material.
We do not take lightly the absolutely thousands of
field trips, tens of thousands of records and the
mountain of data before us. We do not take lightly
the several hundred photo images entrusted with
us to seriously consider and elect.
I have no idea who all of the photographers are
who have joined this effort and provided images.
I know they are amazingly talented and serious
about what they have done for years.
Decades of records published in the "Season
Reports" of the state journal of ornithology,
meshed with countless e-mails of sightings
posted to Bristol Birds Net for the better part
of a decade, all add up to an amazing body
of important data and sound understanding
of the avifauna of Northeast Tennessee.
George B. Sennett,
an Ohio businessman
and well-traveled
amateur ornithologist,
spent time along
the crest of Roan
Mountain in June 1886.
He was followed in
1895 by Samuel N.
Rhoads, a naturalist
affiliated with the
George B. Stennett Academy of Natural
Sciences of Philadelphia. It is not lost on this
team that this annotated checklist archives the
many important and historical records for more
than a century and now begins another.
We hope those of you who have pledge so
generously and sent your hard-earned dollars,
will fall to sleep one night this late summer and
have visions of birding dance thru your heads.
And with The Birds of Northeast Tennessee,
Second Edition, well placed on your nightstands.
Let's go birding.....
Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
.
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