BBC Snippets

The month of April was a busy time for a Charlotte, NC birder and a tiny Saw-whet Owl high atop Roan Mountain along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The spring and summer of 1968 not only was busy for the birder and owl but the editorial staff of the Tennessee journal of ornithology who was scratching their heads and pondering what to do next. It continued throughout the summer and into the fall.

Dr. Lee R. Herndon, editor of THE MIGRANT who lived at Elizabethton, had opened correspondence from the birder, Marcus B. Simpson, Jr., Charlotte County Day School. Simpson had included a manuscript for a note under the title A Saw-whet Owl on Roan Mountain, and dated his correspondence April 18, 1998.

" Despite the fact that the Saw-Whet Owl has never been recorded on Roan Mountain previous to this date, its occurrence there should come as no surprise to those familiar with its habits and haunts," wrote Simpson.

His article noted that beginning at 8:20 pm. on 13 April 1968, he had listened for over an hour to the monotonous cooing notes of a Saw-whet calling from the Spruce-Fir forest of Roan High Bluff.

"The bird apparently began its calling in response to my whistled imitation of its song, a technique which has proved highly successful in locating this owl elsewhere in the southern Appalachians," he wrote in his note for publication. He went on to say that a rapidly growing body of evidence suggests that this owl may be found during the nesting season on any peak which harbors a sufficiently large forest of Spruce and Fir." In his cover letter he reported that he had found the species 23 different occasions around Brevard and Waynesville in North Carolina.

Windy conditions had prevented him from surveying the entire Roan Mountain area and he felt additional field work was needed.

Little did we know that this young birder would eventually become one of the experts on the distribution of the Saw-whet Owls in our mountains but also the author of Birds of the Blue Ridge Mountains, published in 1992 by The University of North Carolina Press.

In 1968, Simpson was preparing a paper for publication about the Saw-whets in the southern Appalachians and he was pushing the editorial staff for a publication date and issue that he could site for the Roan publication in THE MIGRANT.

Dr. Herndon sent the paper to Wallace Coffey, assistant editor, for it to be put in the correspondence to be acknowledge, placed in the copy flow for editing and consideration and eventual follow-up.

The manuscript was assigned as submission number 20 025 and a post card with the title, date received and number to acknowledge receipt. It was mailed to Simpson April 29, 1968. Simpson continued to push for a date for publication.

Herndon was skeptical and raised his eye brows. Charles R. Smith, a staff member of the journal, received another post card from Simpson earlier on April 16 and it had apparently been written a few days before but no date was entered with the correspondence. "I spent the night of April 13 on the peak and managed to call up one (and perhaps two of the owls). The bird was near Roan High Bluff and was heard from the loop road at the extreme western gardens," he wrote. He was now pushing for publication and offered that if the note could be published before the end of the season, "I will write it up with all the details."

Smith responded with a lengthy letter and sent him journal standards for "What Constitutes and Acceptable Record." He was also mailed a copy of the journal so he could familiarize himself with the style. Smith suggested these items would help with any further notes submitted to the journal and instructed him to begin corresponding with Coffey, who handled such papers.

No further manuscript arrived. Simpson wrote Coffey on July 15 and again asked when he could expect his field note to be published so he could cite it in an inclusive paper in THE CHAT, publication of the Carolina Bird Club.

The staff was skeptical of the timing and demands. Smith wanted the Tennessee journal to have a record with more documentation. Herndon didn't seem to want to act on the paper. Coffey sent a rejection note to Simpson and noted that the manuscript would not be returned, per communications with Simpson.

Charlie Smith took delight when, at a fall naturalist rally, Simpson showed up and had just heard another Saw-whet making some kind of sound upon the mountain road near Carver's Gap. Coffey no longer has a good recollection of what took place that night but knows it ended with Smith going to the site and, sure enough, there was the sound. A flash light beam was shined on the bird and it was a an American Woodcock. No one knew what to think by then.

In the cafeteria of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine hospital in Baltimore, December 1974, Coffey's brother, Dr. Donald S. Coffey a faculty member, wanted to introduce Wallace to one of their medical fellowship students who was a birder and said he knew Wallace -- it was Mark Simpson. It was small talk and a small world.

At Boone NC, Rick Knight and Coffey shared a room to participate in the annual state meeting of the Carolina Bird Club. The speaker on the night of May 8, 1992 was Mark Simpson.

With him was Dr. H. Douglas Pratt, chosen to complete the final paintings for Roger Tory Peterson's Field Guide to Birds of the Eastern and Central United States.

Pratt helped illustrate the National Geographic Society's Field Guide to the Birds of North America and did many of the color plates as well as the Yellow-breasted Chat on the title page. He also did Mark Simpson's book, Birds of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Pratt was a scientific illustrators at the famous LSU Museum of Natural Science.

Pratt told Coffey Simpson was looking forward to signing his new book for Coffey and Pratt agreed to sign also, since he did the illustrations for Simpson's book, including the Saw-whet Owl on the title page.

A big smile spread across Simpson's face as he wrote, "Yes Wallace! There are Saw-whet Owls on Roan!"

Pratt followed his signature with a P.S. "Mark owns the Saw-whet drawing!" in reference to the title page.

Simpson wrote Coffey, Wednesday, August 9, 2006, asking him to review pages of his new and revised book on the birds of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He had not worked much on the book due to his wife having a very serious illness.

In the years following first discovery of Saw-whets on Roan Mountains, it has become the most reliable place in the region to hear and sometimes see this tiny mite of an owl which is as small as a beer can. Its soft hoots are heard at sundown near Carver's Gap in April.

From 1993 until 1995, graduate student Mark Barb of East Tennessee State University placed 16 nest boxes on the Roan. They produced five confirmed nests. On March 16, 1994, Barb found the first nest every known on Roan Mountain.

Larry McDaniel, Lorie Shumate, John Shumate, Jr. and Coffey joined Dr. Matt Rowe of Appalachian State University, his graduate students, and Mark Barb at Carver's Gap June 12, 1994 and went to that first nest to band young and gather DNA materials from the young. What an exciting and historic moment.

Coffey looked up at the mother bird perched on a branch just a few feet away and the handful of baby Saw-whets. It had been a quarter of a century since Mark Simpson found the species on Roan Mountain and the editorial staff of the Tennessee journal of ornithology just couldn't get their minds around all that at that time.

from the archives of the Bristol Bird Club