Birders from across Tenneessee and surrounding states will converge on Dayton, TN Jan. 28-29-30 for the Tennessee Ornitholgicial Society's 2005 Annual Winter Meeting. Field trips to two of the state's most significant rare bird wintering areas will be a major attraction. The TOS welcomes all birders of all ages and all skill levels to participate in field trips scheduled Saturday and Sunday, departing at 8 a.m. from the parking lot of the meeting headquarters Best Western Dayton Hotel. Field trips will be led each day to both the famous Hiwassee Refuge and the Smith Bend/Yuchi Refuge owned and managed by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. This area, along the Tennessee River, is home to perhaps the world's largest concentration of cranes. At least one Whooping Crane and an estimated 10,000 Sandhill Cranes are in the area. The Smith Bend/Yuchi Refuge trip will be led on Saturday by Daniel Moss and the Hiwassee Refuge trip by Charlie Muise. The leaders will swap areas on Sunday with Muise leading the Smith Bend/Yuchi Refuge trip and Moss leading the Hiwassee Refuge trip. Daniel Moss, for those birders who may not personally know him, ia a native of Nashville. He lives at Clarksville, and is a contract Wildlife Biologist at Fort Campbell in Montgomery Co. He graduated with a major in Psychology from the Univeristy of Tennessee - Knoxville (BA) in 1984 and went back to get a BS in Biology from Murray State in 1996. Daniel spent a couple of summers working for Dr. David Buehler (UT - Knoxville ) and Dr. Chuck Nicholson (TVA) on the Cerulean Warbler project in the Cumberland Mountains. Before that he assisted with bird research in Alaska, Costa Rica, Missouri, and South Carolina. He later studied under Dr. Buehler on a graduate project at Fort Campbell looking at the reproductive success of Henslow's Sparrows, Grasshopper Sparrows, and other grassland birds. Daniel often contributes to TN-Birds Net. Charlie Muise, lives at Maryville, TN. He became interested in birds in 1992 while studying under Dr. Dan Holliman at Birmingham Southern College. Charlie has lived in six states since then, and has been fortunate enough to live in such birding hotspots as the Chesapeake Bay, Cape Cod, Long Island, the Poconos and the Adirondacks. During the spring and summer of 2000 Charlie worked on a project to compare breeding rates of passerines in the driest county in Maryland to the wettest county in that state. His job included searching for nests and running transect surveys. He became Senior Teacher Naturalist at Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont in August 2000. It was there he met his wife Tracey, who at the time was an active member in the Chattanooga Chapter of Tennessee Ornithological Society. Their first date was a joint outing between that chapter and the Knoxville Chapter, of which Charlie is now president. Charlie is also on the TOS state Conservation Policy Committee and chairs the TOS Conservation and Research Funding Committee. His latest project is with the Tennessee Widlife Resources Agency, to create a Coordinated Bird Monitoring Plan for the state of Tennessee. While his first love was reptiles and amphibians, his favorite group of birds is the sparrows, and one of his most fortunate finds was a field just outside the national park where a number of species unsual to the area stopped during migration in 2000 and 2001. Among the gems were Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparow, LeConte's Sparrow, and hundreds of Savannah Sparrows. Charlie is widely known to state birders as a frequent contributor to TN-Birds Net. The TOS Annual Winter Meeting welcomes college students, researchers, young birders, families, beginning birders, backyard birders, skilled and experienced birders and persons who have a conservation interest in Tennessee birds. You do not have to be a member of the Tennessee Ornithological Society in order to attend. No fee is required. Headquarters and Lodging: The meeting headquarters will be the Best Western Dayton Hotel. A special TOS rate has been established at $45.00 + tax for a Single, and $49.00 + tax for a Double. For reservations, call 1- 800-437-9604 (Ask for TOS rate --you do not have to be a TOS member for the rate). The hotel address is Best Western Dayton 7835 Rhea Co. Hwy., U.S. 27 North Dayton, TN 37321. Directions: From I-75, Exit 40, TN State 30 West to US 27, then North on US 27 to the hotel. From I-40, Exit 347, U.S. Hwy 27 South to the hotel. The 2005 TOS Winter Meeting is a jointly-sponsored effort by the Knoxville, Chattanooga. and Bristol chapters of TOS. Don't miss visiting the TOS website at: http://www.tnbirds.org/Winter05-meeting.htm for more details and excellent maps of the areas. Let's all go to Dayton. We have a tremendous effort invested and many wonderful presenters, leaders and more to come. We need everyone's support. Let's go birding...... Wallace Coffey Bristol, TN =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to sign your messages with first and last name, city (town) and state abbreviation. ----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- To post to this mailing list, simply send email to: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ----------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send email to: tn-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * TN-Bird Net is owned by the Tennessee Ornithological Society Neither the society(TOS) nor its moderator(s) endorse the views or opinions expressed by the members of this discussion group. Moderator: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Topographical Maps located at http://topozone.com/find.asp * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ========================================================