Area Birders: Don Holt again called from the field about 11:00 a.m. reporting that the Sooty Tern has now been in the Spring Creek Embayment near Musick's Campground on South Holston Lake for almost four hours and is appearing frequently throughout the morning. He has been able to get many great looks at the bird. The out-of-region birder who showed up is Bert Filemyr of Philadelphia, Pa. who is traveling through the area enroute to visit his daughter at college in Texas. He has a laptop computer and GPS. He told Don he was scanning birding list on websites when he saw that a Sooty Tern was being seen at South Holston Lake and he was not far away. He also was able to discover directions to Musick's Campground by searching on the internet websites (directions are on BBC website and TOS). He followed the instructions and drove straight in. He easily found the Sooty Tern. He was thrilled to get it in both Virginia and Tennessee. Filemyr said a Sooty Tern had recently been in New Jersey and he missed finding the bird. He had taken a lot of teasing from his fellow birders because he had not seen the species. Holt reported that the Sanderling is again there today. He said that while a few shortebirds, including the Sanderling, were in a group on the "outer banks" (a name I suggested we use for the main island just off shore that can be waded to at this time), a Merlin dashed into them and busted the flock. The birds scattered and later regrouped not far away. Don had originally called because two men were shooting Canada Geese. They were shooting from their boat at geese along and on the shoreline, dipping the dead birds with a net. The season is open at South Holston and elsewhere as shown in the box below which I copied from the TWRA website. Hunters may kill 5 Canada Geese per day each through Sept. 15. Wood Duck and Teal season opens Saturday. Canada Goose+ Sept.1 Sept.15 5 Wood Duck/Teal + (early season) Sept.11 Sept.15 4** It may not be considered sportsmanlike by other hunters and may not be legal to shoot the geese if they are not in the air but I doubt if anything would be done about it. Don does have the number of the boat they were hunting from. 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-****