Greetings,
By now just about everyone on the listserv is aware of the Kiptopeke
Challenge being held on 20 September. If not, in short, it is a Birdathon
where teams
will participate trying to find as many species of bird as possible in a
twenty-four hour period. Money raised goes to the Coastal Virginia Wildlife
Observatory (CVWO). Kurt Gaskill has done a fine job in recent days touting
why
supporting CVWO is a good idea, and those messages can be found in the archives
of VA Bird if you missed them. My plea is a bit more direct.
The Southeast Expeditions team is in it's first year, and we need donations!
The team is Mike Stinson, Sue Heath, Ian Topolsky, and yours truly. Our name
comes from the Kayak/Outdoor Adventure shop located just next to the Best
Western near the tip, run by Dave Burden, called Southeast Expeditions.
We'll bird for at least twenty hours, maybe more, and would love to bring a
respectable envelope of pledges to the event. There are a couple ways to
sponsor our team. One would be to give a flat donation to the team for the
entire
event. Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred bucks or more would be wonderful. It's
tax deductible, and goes to a worthy cause. Another way to sponsor would be
to pledge money based on the amount of species we find. Sort of a masochistic
way to make the four of us sleepless for a day (or two, since there's little
chance that we'll get much sleep the night before), and have us just keep
pushing knowing that each species means more money. We're fine with that, up
for
the challenge. In truth I don't know how many species we'll get. I think
somewhere between 110 and 130 is our target, but there are lots of variables,
and
we're a little green doing a big day on the Eastern Shore. Big days aren't
new to any of us, so we know what we're getting into (extreme fatigue, midday
punchiness, toothpicks under the eyelids (think Flintstones...)), but there's a
little trial and error to planning a route. It also helps if it's a good
passerine flight. Not to mention weather. That can put a damper on things in
a
hurry, and would keep the species totals down. What I can say is that we'll
cover as much ground from the CBBT to Chincoteague and beat the bushes to find
as many species as we can. We're ready, willing, and hopefully able, what we
need are donors.
So, please, if you'd like to support this team, send me an email or give me a
call to let me know.
Email: blkvulture@xxxxxxx.
Toll free: 800-947-2251. Ask for me, leave a message if after work hours.
Cell Phone: 703-209-8463.
Cheers,
Todd
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Todd Michael Day
Jeffersonton, VA
BlkVulture@xxxxxxx
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