[Bristol-Birds] SHL Bald Eagle mystery discovers another chapter for history.
- From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:22:00 -0500
Members of the Russell County
Bird Club listened with amazement
while area birders told their stories
as the intriguing mystery about
the Bald Eagle nest at South
Holston Lake continued to be
revealed. It has come in bits and
pieces over the past month. The
history of the nest is being written
one chapter at a time. The club
gathered Sunday to see the nest.
Jean Montgomery (left), who says she tried in
vain to get others to help her verify the nest
last June, is still puzzled as to why she was not
given credibility when she told other birders.
"Last summer, I told Bob Riggs I believed I had
found an eagle's nest here," she said. "I also
told Roger Mayhorn." Montgomery, an active
and long-time member of the Russell County
club, was dismayed. She says no one tried to
help her. None of them ever came to look, as
far as she has known. "No one believed me."
Sunday, members of the club gathered at the lake house of Lebanon
residents Sandy and Bill Lawson. Across the lake they had a show
worth writing home about. Two majestic eagles were very active about
the nest. The birds stood on the nest, flew about it, evidently brooded
young eaglets and one of the adults was chased by a Peregrine Falcon.
It seems evident that only an extremely small number of people knew
anything about this eagle nest during the past year. It was not known
to the majority of the Russell County Bird Club members.
Mayhorn, of Buchanan County, is a leader of that county's bird club
and a Southwest Virginia regional editor of Virginia Birds, a quarterly
journal of ornithological sightings published by the Virginia Society of
Ornithology. His position is to accumulate bird sightings from regional
birders and compile and publish the records in the VSO journal.
It is the cooperation and contributions of sightings by birders that
make it possible for VSO to publish the journal. The reports, like all
such ornithological records, depend heavily upon field collaboration
by as many observers as can be made available.
Riggs, a state Conservation Police Officer, previously called
game wardens, is an education specialist with the Virginia Dept.
of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF), working out of Marion.
He is the founder of the Russell County Bird Club.
The photo at the
left was taken
Sunday afternoon
from the Lawson's
lake house window
and shows an adult
eagle apparently
brooding young in
the nest while a
light rain fell in the
area and the tree
rocked gently in
the wind.
Members of the Russell County
Bird Club who attended the outing
were: Carolyn Coffey, Wallace
Coffey, Laverne Hunter, Tom
Hunter, Bill Lawson, Sandy Lawson,
Jean Montgomery, Samantha
Montgomery, Dave Worley and
Diana Worley.
Let's go birding . . . .
Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
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