[Bristol-Birds] Historical Snippet - Dec 30,1961

 BBC Snippet  
Perhaps the last thing that would cross your mind is that
Johnny Wood, the likeable anchor of WCYB-TV's Newscenter 5 
This Morning with Johnny Wood,  has several years taken part in
the Bristol Christmas bird count.


That is a fact many will never 
stumble across. Most of you know him as 
the morning news guy who has one of the 
highest rated morning newscast in America.  
That means he has a higher percentage of
his audience during that morning time slot 
than any other local anchor in the country.  
If not now, at least for many years, no one 
had a higher rating.

Johnny is well known for his fishing and his fishing reports which he
has probably aired constantly since he joined the WCYB-TV5 team
in 1968.  That may come to a close this spring because the chatter
on the street has it he is retiring in May.  Wow.  More than 40 years in
broadcasting !

He entered the bird scene as Wallace Coffey's friend since the two
first met in college and in the days when he and Coffey's sister worked
together in radio.  Two other birders at WCYB-TV, where Coffey
directed evening newscasts in the late 1960's, were very active. 
Among them was Roger Stone, who was with Coffey when
they found Tennessee's first and only Northern Shrike in November 
1964.  A popular news anchor of that time, Gerry Delantonas, was also
active on the bird scene.  He was compiler of the Bristol Christmas
Bird Count in 1967.

The BBC has always hustled to make the Bristol Christmas Bird
Count more productive and enjoyable for all.  So unique ways
of covering the count area were adopted from unique things
going on around its members.

The most early use of boats by BBC was Hank Woodward and Coffey 
kayaking the length of Stonemill Marsh at Abingdon with the
weather blazing cold and ice hanging from all the vegetation
during the Dec 30,1961 Bristol Christmas count.

The most recent is the June 14-15-16, 2002 weekend at the
Rikemo Lodge of The Nature Conservancy when the BBC took
nine canoes for a 9-mile birding trip down the Clinch River from
Cleveland, Va.  Some 19 birders took part, including Ed Talbott
and Michelle Talbot who had just joined the BBC.  We were
great river runners until Janice Martin sank in a rapids after
turning her boat over by grabbing a limb.

Snippet has accounted the club's use of boats for various 
events as well as field trips at South Holston Lake.  We'll
tell you later about boating and birding with the Bob Parker family 
at Watauga Lake. 

Early on the BBC began using motorboats to cover South Holston
Lake during the Bristol Christmas count.  The first adventure 
was with a borrowed rental boat from Laurel Yacht Club in 1967.  

In 1969 Johnny Wood joined the count and worked waterfowl from
his boat on South Holston Lake.  He was on the count for several
years and some of the reports indicate up to 58 miles of lake
and shoreline coverage and as much as 7 hours aboard the boat.

Bristol Christmas Bird Count used boats for a period of 7 or 8
years over a decade from the late 1960s into the late 1970s.

In 1976, road conditions were bad, the weather dangerous.  It 
cleared and the sun was out on count day.  Dr. Phil Shelton of
Clinch Valley College at Wise, Va. flew from Lonesome Pine
Airport to Bristol and provided some 40 miles of air coverage to
count birds, including waterfowl.  Most of us might call it harsh
conditions but Shelton has vast experience flying in various
types of weather in isolated and primitive wilderness.  He
enrolled at Perdue University in 1960 and spent years working
on his Ph.D. studying beavers at Isle Royale, located in the  
northwest portion of Lake Superior.  He had flown many trips
in and out and about some 400 square miles of an area accessible 
only by boat or plane.  He has flown widely throughout the 
Southern Appalachians in his private plane since he moved
here.   He is, perhaps, our living expert on the birds of Mount 
Rogers-Whitetop.  He certainly has spent more time there than
any birder in history.

Charlie Smith, a member of the Lee & Lois Herndon
TOS Chapter in the late 1960's, applied for a grant from the
Tennessee Academy of Science to experiment with aerial counts
of waterfowl at Boone and Patrick Henry lakes in Sullivan County.
The grant funded a winter-long series of weekly flights from Tri-City
Airport using a rented plane and pilot from the Appalachian Flying
Service.  Coffey was a mentor to Smith and was on board for those
air counts each week and helped design the project.  Some of that
was carried over to later BBC activities.  Charlie earned his Ph.D.
at Cornell University and was on the staff at the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology.  He was the fist technical editor for the Lab's 
outstanding magazine Living Bird.  He is still at Cornell and nearing
retirement.

The use of planes to survey birds and their habitat extended itself
into the 1970's with Jim Bowdoin of Bristol, a long-time member of
the Tri-City Airport Commission, flying Coffey frequently on all types
of air searches.  Included in these were the first air survey and
photos of the Slagle Creek Natural Area which is the southwestern
half of Steele Creek Park in the city of Bristol.  

Bowdoin also flew author Michael Frome and Coffey over hundreds
of miles, including Mount Rogers-Whitetop and Roan Mountain.
Frome authored two excellent books, "Strangers In High Places.
The Story of the Great Smoky Mountain" (1966) and "Whose Woods
These Are. The Story of the National Forest" (1962).  He was the
past editor of the Society of American Foresters' magazine and a 
columnist with Field & Stream.  Jim was a star halfback for the 
Alabama Crimson Tied, 1954-55-56.  He is well known throughout this
region as an active college and high school football official.

The Bristol Herald Courier made available to Coffey, in the early 1970s, 
its corporate plane to survey habitat of the mountains from Roanoke
to Knoxville.  That was followed by the U.S. Forest Service providing
its Region 8 plane from Atlanta for Coffey and Jefferson National
Forest Supervisor Mike Penfold to survey areas from Bristol to 
Newfound Gap in the Smokies.

In the early 1970's, Dr. Fred Alsop arrived in Northeast Tennessee on
the faculty of East Tennessee State University at the Kingsport Campus.
A well-known birder, author, artist and lecture on birds, he soon had
his own airplane which was used widely across the region, state and
other parts of the country.  Dr. Tom Laughlin and Rick Phillips, his 
students, joined him on some trips.

In the late 1990's, Dr. Jim Lapis, 
a gastroenterologist with 
Gastroenterology Associates of 
Bristol, offered the use of his 
airplane to fly Bald Eagle counts 
of Upper East Tennessee
reservoirs each January.  He flew 
the first trip and then his wife,
Dr. Susan Lapis, flew two trips.  
Susan is secretary of the Asheville 
based SouthWings,  a non-profit conservation organization that
provides skilled pilots and aerial education to enhance conservation 
efforts across the Southeast.  Susan is a 1000-plus hour instrument-rated
pilot who has flown her Cessna 182 for SouthWings since 1999. She is a
PhD biochemist who has worked in enzymology and cancer research.  Susan 
has also taught various pre-med chemistry courses and still teaches in winter 
at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon as a volunteer.

Jim Lapis took over 
for her and flew another
flight or two.  Among 
those who helped with 
the aerial surveys of 
the Bald Eagles and flew on
board these flights were 
Larry McDaniel, 
Rick Knight, Dave Worley 
and Coffey.  The data from 
these surveys is part of 
the annual mid-winter eagle 
counts made each year
by the Tennessee Wildlife 
Resources Agency. The 
local flights for the eagles 
were based  out of Virginia 
Highlands Airport and included surveys of South Holston Lake, Watauga Lake, 
Boone Lake, Patrick Henry Lake, the Holston River to Cherokee Dam and back 
to Abingdon. 

When the U.S. Forest Service thought they may have evidence of a Bald
Eagle nesting near Little Oak Campground on South Holston Lake but could
not find a nest,  Dr. Jim Lapis and Coffey flew a treetop search but nothing
was found. 

McDaniel will remember the cold January morning with snow on the ground
and heavy frost on the wings when he stood on a step ladder and swept and
brushed the frost off the wings of the Cessna 182.  Jim Lapis spent nearly and 
hour
getting the engine started on a plane that had a bad battery.  Worley will
never forget flying over all the devastation of flooding along the river in
Carter County near Hampton where homes were widely destroyed.  Nor
will he forget a treetop pass below the ridge at Roan Creek on the upper
end of Watauga Lake as he made video of an adult Bald Eagle perched on
a branch above the water.  Knight will remember discovering the Great
Blue Heron nesting colony on an island in Cherokee Lake.  He also
photographed Orchard Bog from the air on a return trip.

In more recent years James Brooks, a staff writer with the Johnson City Press
and a bird columnist, earned his pilot license and frequently flew out of the
Greeneville area.  James has led bird tours in many parts of the world and
has been a lister and birder of much note.

From the archives of the Bristol Bird Club

GIF image

JPEG image

Windows bitmap

JPEG image

JPEG image

Other related posts: