A telephone call came earlier this evening reporting a Eurasian Collared-Dove in Hawkins County at Bulls Gap, TN. This extends the Upper East Tennessee distribution to a county along the Virginia state border and just west of and adjacent to Sullivan, one of the tradional five counties we call Northeast Tennessee. It has been previously found in Jefferson County on 7 January 2001 when a single bird was seen by David Trently. It will soon be found in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. The new report was Sunday, 6 May 2004, by John Rucker a naturalist known to me. John says the bird was in a dead snag adjacent to his property which is located at 121 Church Street in Bulls Gap. He was familiar with the species from having learned it in 2002 at McClellanville, SC just north of Charleston. But yesterday he used a pair of 8x binoculars and double checked against his Sibley's bird book to make sure he had everything covered. The location is along the Norfolk Southern Railway trackage. John said he heard the bird calling and recognized the sound and quickly checked it with his binoculars. He was able to get a long and good look at all of the markings including the shape of the tail and the black collar marking. The species has rapidly spready across Tennessee during the past 10 years and more so in the last few. 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-****