Our own Andy Jones, from Kingsport, TN, will present two seminars at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences at Raleigh, Mar 15. He is one of three finalist for the position of senior curator of birds at the museum. The seminars are part of the selection process. Andy is a doctoral candidate at the Deptment of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota - St. Paul where he works with the bird collection at the famous Bell Museum of Natural History. He is a frequent participants in Christmas bird counts and other field work in the Bristol area. The other finalist are Angelo Capparella, Associate Professor/Curator of Birds, Department of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University and Christin Pruett, post-doctoral research associate, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M University (College Station). Each of the finalist will present one more hard-core scientific research, and one lighter fluffier general-public sort of talk. On March 15 Andy will speak on "Things that go peep in the night: the migration of North Carolina's birds" for his public type subject. This presentation explores nocturnal migratory routes and practices of some of North Carolina's most interesting birds. His more serious scientific presentation will be: "Evolutionary History of Philippine Birds." The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' bird collection is one of the three largest of its kind in the southeastern United States and is the only collection of significant size in North Carolina. Its 20,000 specimens represent 26 of 27 orders, 135 families, 598 genera, and 1,500 to 2,000 taxa. The museum possesses a notable collection of seabirds containing 2,300 skins, hundreds of skeletons, and an extensive number of fluid-preserved birds, some of which can be found only in this collection. It is one of the few museums to house a spread wing collection, which contains more than 1,000 specimens. The museum also has a significant Philippine bird collection, several thousand egg sets, and about 1,000 voice recordings of North Carolina birds. The museum exhibits two of the collection's rarest specimens: the Carolina parakeet (left) and the passenger pigeon. The collection began with museum founders H.H. Brimley and C.S. Brimley in the early 1900s. However, most of the specimens were acquired after 1975 under the leadership of Curator of Birds David Lee. In addition, the Museum of Natural Sciences serves as the repository for deceased specimens of rare and endangered birds from several institutions, including the North Carolina, Baltimore and Philadelphia zoos and the Carolina Raptor Center. Through cooperative agreements with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, the museum receives many valuable salvage specimens from bird rehabilitators across North Carolina. We wish Andy good luck. Let's go birding..... Wallace Coffey Bristol, TN ************************************************* BRISTOL BIRDS NET LIST Bristol Birds Net Photo Gallery located at: http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jwcoffeyy/album?.dir=/efd5 This is a regional birding list sponsored by the Bristol Bird Club to facilitate communications between birders and bird clubs of Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. -------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to Bristol-Birds. To post to this mailing list, simply send an email to: bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe, send an email to bristol-birds-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the one word 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. -------------------------------------------------- Wallace Coffey, Moderator wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (423)764-****