Trees, Moths, Gulls
I heard the barred owl call just after observing moths out on the porch which was after a great presentation by Ross Spears, at the Roan Mountain Naturalists rally, my tummy being full from a good buffet served up by the City Market from Elizabethton, Tennessee.
The barred owl was a captive, in permanent rehab, at the park conference center but if you haven’t heard one in a couple of years its call comes as a delight. He picked a great night to call, too, with clear skies, lots of stars, and warm enough for the moths to come to the lights.
This was the 57th Fall Rally, sponsored by the Friends of Roan Mountain. They hold two rallies a year. This year the speakers were Kenn and Kimberly Kaufmann, who spoke on bird migration at the Saturday rally, and Ross Spears, who spoke to Friday night’s record crowd.
Ross Spears is a Johnson City native who has made a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker, now working out of Washington, D.C. I saw one of his first films in the early eighties at the ETSU campus, “Electric Valley.” If you can conjure up John Prine’s hit “Paradise” you’ll get the gist of the film. Ross Spears’ company, James Agee Films, has a substantial track record and I think our audience wanted to see and hear a bit about this process of making a documentary. His near-finished project which has taken a couple of years to get this far is titled “The Truth About Trees.” We were a tree-appreciative group.
Birding-wise, the summer has been predictably slow. Area birders were alerted a week ago that laughing gulls and a lone lesser-black-backed gull had alighted in South Holston Lake. So maybe the migration for the fall has already started.
The water level at Douglas Lake/ Rankin Bottoms is still dropping to create mud flats for hunters but also for the migratory shore birds who stop over there during late August and early September. A current check at the TVA site showed the lake a foot or two too high. It’s a bit of a timing problem since the lake level and the arrival need to match up.
We expect the traffic to increase with the change in seasons both in the lowlands, like the lakes, and in upper elevations, too, like Carver’s Gap and the Mendota Fire Tower.
***
The barred owl was a captive, in permanent rehab, at the park conference center but if you haven’t heard one in a couple of years its call comes as a delight. He picked a great night to call, too, with clear skies, lots of stars, and warm enough for the moths to come to the lights.
This was the 57th Fall Rally, sponsored by the Friends of Roan Mountain. They hold two rallies a year. This year the speakers were Kenn and Kimberly Kaufmann, who spoke on bird migration at the Saturday rally, and Ross Spears, who spoke to Friday night’s record crowd.
Ross Spears is a Johnson City native who has made a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker, now working out of Washington, D.C. I saw one of his first films in the early eighties at the ETSU campus, “Electric Valley.” If you can conjure up John Prine’s hit “Paradise” you’ll get the gist of the film. Ross Spears’ company, James Agee Films, has a substantial track record and I think our audience wanted to see and hear a bit about this process of making a documentary. His near-finished project which has taken a couple of years to get this far is titled “The Truth About Trees.” We were a tree-appreciative group.
Birding-wise, the summer has been predictably slow. Area birders were alerted a week ago that laughing gulls and a lone lesser-black-backed gull had alighted in South Holston Lake. So maybe the migration for the fall has already started.
The water level at Douglas Lake/ Rankin Bottoms is still dropping to create mud flats for hunters but also for the migratory shore birds who stop over there during late August and early September. A current check at the TVA site showed the lake a foot or two too high. It’s a bit of a timing problem since the lake level and the arrival need to match up.
We expect the traffic to increase with the change in seasons both in the lowlands, like the lakes, and in upper elevations, too, like Carver’s Gap and the Mendota Fire Tower.
***
posted by Charles Moore at
4:55 AM
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