[Bristol-Birds] Bristol Bird Club beings ambitious planning
- From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:05:09 -0400
Members of the Bristol Bird Club met Thursday night at Steele Creek Park
with newly-elected President Dave Worley presiding.
BBC members authorized Vice-President Dr. John Moyle, who chairs
the BBC Rainforest Adventures Committee, to begin the process of
planning for the club's 2008 birding trip to Ecuador. The country is located
on the west coast of South America. Committee members include
Moyle, Larry McDaniel, Mary Erwin, Dave Worley and Janice Martin.
In 2006 BBC birders went to Trinidad.
Plans are underway to hold the club's annual banquet Sept. 21 and the
membership agreed to seek reservations at the The Center on U.S. 421
just south of Bristol Tennessee. A committee of Mary Erwin, McDaniel
and Coffey will arrange for a speaker.
In other matters, the membership decided to request that the Steele Creek
Park Nature Center enter into a cooperative agreement with the Bristol Bird
Club to arrange for famed author and butterfly expert Jeffrey Glassberg to
speak at a joint public program sponsored by the partners. A date will
depend on when Glassberg will be available. Hopefully the talk can be
arranged within a few months. Larry McDaniel will contact the speaker
immediately. This will be an expensive project. We have a history
of speakers such as national bird authors Ken Kaufman, Bob & Martha Sargent
and others. BBC sponsored Brian K. Wheeler, author of Raptors of
Eastern North America for the fall meeting of the Kentucky Ornithological
Society at Pine Mountain State Park, Ky.
Glassberg's 1993 revolutionary Butterflies Through Binoculars has
introduced naturalist everywhere to the exciting field identification of
butterflies.
He is has served as president of the North American Butterfly Association.
It is hoped that his talk can either be the first step or the kickoff and
rollout of
a Steele Creek Park Nature Center--based NABA - Northeast Tennessee
Chapter of the butterfly association. BBC member McDaniel and Steele
Creek Park Nature Center manager Jeremy Stout will head up the NABA
chapter effort.
The BBC-sponsored Kingsport Fun Fest birding field trips got off to a good
start Saturday with the Bristol Bird Club-Wards Feed Store Bird Walk at
Bays Mountain Park. We had a good turnout. John Moyle led the Saturday
walk. Our second walk is Wednesday morning (July 17) 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. at
Bays Mountina Park. John Hay will be the leader. We have enjoyed
a close partnership with Wards Feed Store for several years. The store
management pays our event sponsorship fee and promotional costs.
We have also conducted a fall seed sale fundraiser at the store for two
years.
The membership suggested that BBC study looking into moving our
annual winter Golden Eagle Field Trip from Burke's Garden in Tazewell
to Highland County, VA. This will be a weekend overnight. Highland
County on the West Virginia border is the Golden Eagle capitol of Virginia.
There was also discussion of a weekend overnight trip to Rockfish Gap,
the most prolific hawk migration site in the entire south and Blue Ridge
Mountains. Moyle talked about BBC-sponsored field trips to the Outer Banks
of North Carolina, an offshore pelagic trip and a West Tennessee field trip
to a destination such as Reelfoot Lake or Land Between-The-Lakes.
In addition to elected officers for 2007-2008, Worley appointed Ron Harrington
to a third term as assistant treasurer, Richard Lewis as statistician and Coffey
curator. Elected officers include Worley, Secretary Diana Worley and
Treasurer Janice Martin.
Martin noted that the club's financial conditions remain stable with a
significant
surplus on deposit. Membership is down due to our relaxed recruitment efforts.
Larry McDaniel suggested that we use Coffey's Virginia Highland Festival
birdwalk which is scheduled Saturday, July 28, 7:30 a.m. at the Creeper
Trailhead
in Abingdon, Va. It has long been a deep and productive source of new found
members for BBC. Mary Erwin pointed out that Ron Harrington has us again
on schedule for a booth at the fair. McDaniel and Worley both expressed the
need to refocus our membership efforts.
It was requested that our online newsletter The Eagle, continue electronic
publishing in August. Coffey agreed to get that done.
Worley appointed several committees for the coming year.
Dave said our webpage will be back online as soon at the hosting company
gets all of its servers up and running. The company has moved its offices.
Dave reported that we can now host 100 e-mail address for club members.
It was agreed that every online member can have a Bristol Bird Club e-mail
address. This means family memberships will include one for each online and
active member of that family. Our e-mail addresses includes the member's first
name and
then domain. Example: Larry McDaniel is larry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx This
makes
it easy to send an e-mail to any member by simply using their first name. This
feature will be functional later this summer or early fall.
Larry will again lead our Mendota hawk watch field trip set for Sept. 22 on
Clinch
Mountain. Ron Harrington will coordinate coverage of the lookout which has been
sponsored by the BBC for several years.
Thursday night was show and tell and members brought so many items to share
that we didn't get them all shown and told :-)
Let's go birding......
Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
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