[TN-Bird] Comment on my Red-necked Grebe & Mike's photo

Hello Mike and Everybody,

User unfriendly is right.  When I went to your web page, a Bell South message 
informed me that I "have no authorization" to visit this web page.  I'm on 
AOL, so maybe the two are not compatible?  I've never seen THAT message before, 
and I've been denied access to many a web page usually due to MY security 
program or because of a "can't find" error.

By the way, the fabulous wing pattern in flight is what attracted my 
attention to my first of these birds.  It was at the Audubon Camp of Maine in 
the 
summer of 1952, and the great Allen Cruickshank spotted a bird flying at a 
little 
distance and called, 
"common loon" and pointed. I looked, saw those wings, and, in my just turned 
18 timidness, whispered, "but, Mr. Cruickshank, since when does the common 
loon have that white in its wings?"  He put his glasses on the bird and yelped 
out, "Oh my God, that's the first Holboell's grebe* on Muscongus Bay in 17 
years!"  From that day forward, Allan was a friend (as was his wife Helen) who 
never questioned and always respected my birding abilities as long as he lived. 
 
After they moved to Rockledge, FL (bordering Cocoa to the south), he started 
the Cocoa Christmas Count, and I was always with my long-time team from the 
Winter Park/Orlando area from the first of these counts until I moved to 
Tennessee, except for a few years while I traveled to other locations for the 
Christmas 
season.  Allan always had the birds staked out and told us what time to be 
where, i.e., "At exactly 9:10 AM, two whimbrel will fly from the north side of 
the dike across from the turn basin to the south side.  Get them."  The 
whimbrel did fly, and we got them.  He'd have the short-eared owl, bar-tailed 
godwit 
and other "raries" staked out and timed the years that they were there, and we 
were expected to get them.  We always did.

For several years before that, our Winter Park/Orlando group had done a 
Titusville Christmas Count BEFORE NASA took over those fantastic areas and 
denied 
us access.  Just across the old bridge in Titusville is where we almost always 
picked up the sweet little dusky seaside sparrow before its habitat there was 
destroyed leaving the final bird to meet its demise in a lab at Disney World a 
few years ago.

So much for old memories which were such great fun and so rewarding!

*Red-necked grebe's former name.

Dee Thompson
Nashville, TN
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