BBC Snippets

Link: http://www.freelists.org/archives/bristol-birds/02-2008/msg00067.html

Perhaps the last thing that would cross your mind is that Johnny Wood, the likeable anchor of WCYB-TV's Newscenter 5 This Morning with Johnny Wood, has several years taken part in the Bristol Christmas bird count.

That is a fact many will never stumble across. Most of you know him as the morning news guy who has one of the highest rated morning newscast in America. That means he has a higher percentage of his audience during that morning time slot than any other local anchor in the country. If not now, at least for many years, no one had a higher rating.

Johnny is well known for his fishing and his fishing reports which he has probably aired constantly since he joined the WCYB-TV5 team in 1968. That may come to a close this spring because the chatter on the street has it he is retiring in May. Wow. More than 40 years in broadcasting !

He entered the bird scene as Wallace Coffey's friend since the two first met in college and in the days when he and Coffey's sister worked together in radio. Two other birders at WCYB-TV, where Coffey directed evening newscasts in the late 1960's, were very active. Among them was Roger Stone, who was with Coffey when they found Tennessee's first and only Northern Shrike in November 1964. A popular news anchor of that time, Gerry Delantonas, was also active on the bird scene. He was compiler of the Bristol Christmas Bird Count in 1967.

The BBC has always hustled to make the Bristol Christmas Bird Count more productive and enjoyable for all. So unique ways of covering the count area were adopted from unique things going on around its members.

The most early use of boats by BBC was Hank Woodward and Coffey kayaking the length of Stonemill Marsh at Abingdon with the weather blazing cold and ice hanging from all the vegetation during the Dec 30,1961 Bristol Christmas count.

The most recent is the June 14-15-16, 2002 weekend at the Rikemo Lodge of The Nature Conservancy when the BBC took nine canoes for a 9-mile birding trip down the Clinch River from Cleveland, Va. Some 19 birders took part, including Ed Talbott and Michelle Talbot who had just joined the BBC. We were great river runners until Janice Martin sank in a rapids after turning her boat over by grabbing a limb.

Snippet has accounted the club's use of boats for various events as well as field trips at South Holston Lake. We'll tell you later about boating and birding with the Bob Parker family at Watauga Lake.

Early on the BBC began using motorboats to cover South Holston Lake during the Bristol Christmas count. The first adventure was with a borrowed rental boat from Laurel Yacht Club in 1967.

In 1969 Johnny Wood joined the count and worked waterfowl from his boat on South Holston Lake. He was on the count for several years and some of the reports indicate up to 58 miles of lake and shoreline coverage and as much as 7 hours aboard the boat.

Bristol Christmas Bird Count used boats for a period of 7 or 8 years over a decade from the late 1960s into the late 1970s.

In 1976, road conditions were bad, the weather dangerous. It cleared and the sun was out on count day. Dr. Phil Shelton of Clinch Valley College at Wise, Va. flew from Lonesome Pine Airport to Bristol and provided some 40 miles of air coverage to count birds, including waterfowl. Most of us might call it harsh conditions but Shelton has vast experience flying in various types of weather in isolated and primitive wilderness. He enrolled at Perdue University in 1960 and spent years working on his Ph.D. studying beavers at Isle Royale, located in the northwest portion of Lake Superior. He had flown many trips in and out and about some 400 square miles of an area accessible only by boat or plane. He has flown widely throughout the Southern Appalachians in his private plane since he moved here. He is, perhaps, our living expert on the birds of Mount Rogers-Whitetop. He certainly has spent more time there than any birder in history.

Charlie Smith, a member of the Lee & Lois Herndon TOS Chapter in the late 1960's, applied for a grant from the Tennessee Academy of Science to experiment with aerial counts of waterfowl at Boone and Patrick Henry lakes in Sullivan County. The grant funded a winter-long series of weekly flights from Tri-City Airport using a rented plane and pilot from the Appalachian Flying Service. Coffey was a mentor to Smith and was on board for those air counts each week and helped design the project. Some of that was carried over to later BBC activities. Charlie earned his Ph.D. at Cornell University and was on the staff at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. He was the fist technical editor for the Lab's outstanding magazine Living Bird. He is still at Cornell and nearing retirement.

The use of planes to survey birds and their habitat extended itself into the 1970's with Jim Bowdoin of Bristol, a long-time member of the Tri-City Airport Commission, flying Coffey frequently on all types of air searches. Included in these were the first air survey and photos of the Slagle Creek Natural Area which is the southwestern half of Steele Creek Park in the city of Bristol.

Bowdoin also flew author Michael Frome and Coffey over hundreds of miles, including Mount Rogers-Whitetop and Roan Mountain. Frome authored two excellent books, "Strangers In High Places. The Story of the Great Smoky Mountain" (1966) and "Whose Woods These Are. The Story of the National Forest" (1962). He was the past editor of the Society of American Foresters' magazine and a columnist with Field & Stream. Jim was a star halfback for the Alabama Crimson Tied, 1954-55-56. He is well known throughout this region as an active college and high school football official.

The Bristol Herald Courier made available to Coffey, in the early 1970s, its corporate plane to survey habitat of the mountains from Roanoke to Knoxville. That was followed by the U.S. Forest Service providing its Region 8 plane from Atlanta for Coffey and Jefferson National Forest Supervisor Mike Penfold to survey areas from Bristol to Newfound Gap in the Smokies.

In the early 1970's, Dr. Fred Alsop arrived in Northeast Tennessee on the faculty of East Tennessee State University at the Kingsport Campus. A well-known birder, author, artist and lecture on birds, he soon had his own airplane which was used widely across the region, state and other parts of the country. Dr. Tom Laughlin and Rick Phillips, his students, joined him on some trips.

In the late 1990's, Dr. Jim Lapis, a gastroenterologist with Gastroenterology Associates of Bristol, offered the use of his airplane to fly Bald Eagle counts of Upper East Tennessee reservoirs each January. He flew the first trip and then his wife, Dr. Susan Lapis, flew two trips. Susan is secretary of the Asheville based SouthWings, a non-profit conservation organization that provides skilled pilots and aerial education to enhance conservation efforts across the Southeast. Susan is a 1000-plus hour instrument-rated pilot who has flown her Cessna 182 for SouthWings since 1999. She is a PhD biochemist who has worked in enzymology and cancer research. Susan has also taught various pre-med chemistry courses and still teaches in winter at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon as a volunteer.

Jim Lapis took over for her and flew another flight or two. Among those who helped with the aerial surveys of the Bald Eagles and flew on board these flights were Larry McDaniel, Rick Knight, Dave Worley and Coffey. The data from these surveys is part of the annual mid-winter eagle counts made each year by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. The local flights for the eagles were based out of Virginia Highlands Airport and included surveys of South Holston Lake, Watauga Lake, Boone Lake, Patrick Henry Lake, the Holston River to Cherokee Dam and back to Abingdon.

When the U.S. Forest Service thought they may have evidence of a Bald Eagle nesting near Little Oak Campground on South Holston Lake but could not find a nest, Dr. Jim Lapis and Coffey flew a treetop search but nothing was found.

McDaniel will remember the cold January morning with snow on the ground and heavy frost on the wings when he stood on a step ladder and swept and brushed the frost off the wings of the Cessna 182. Jim Lapis spent nearly and hour getting the engine started on a plane that had a bad battery. Worley will never forget flying over all the devastation of flooding along the river in Carter County near Hampton where homes were widely destroyed. Nor will he forget a treetop pass below the ridge at Roan Creek on the upper end of Watauga Lake as he made video of an adult Bald Eagle perched on a branch above the water. Knight will remember discovering the Great Blue Heron nesting colony on an island in Cherokee Lake. He also photographed Orchard Bog from the air on a return trip.

In more recent years James Brooks, a staff writer with the Johnson City Press and a bird columnist, earned his pilot license and frequently flew out of the Greeneville area. James has led bird tours in many parts of the world and has been a lister and birder of much note.

From the archives of the Bristol Bird Club