The final count for the 2018 bird banding season is here!
The 2017 bird banding season has come to a close, marking yet another year of avian research conducted at the Bird Observatory!
Summer 2017 Banding has begun! Check here for scheduling.
Southeast Conservation Corps has been camping out at the Bird Observatory this week cutting trails to aid in bird-banding operations!
The Trust bird lab has its very own logo! Designed by our Cerulean Warbler Researcher Holland Youngman, the logo features a Scarlet Tanager, a common nester in the Tennessee River Gorge. We'll be getting official Bird Observatory shirts with corresponding logo for all of our researchers!
Yesterday, the Trust purchased a radio telemetry receiver for use in our Cerulean Warbler 2-Year Survey with a grant from the Tennessee Ornithological Society.
This season, researcher Holland Youngman will be using radio telemetry to track the foraging habits of Cerulean Warblers in the Gorge.
The official whiteboard.
Yesterday, a crew of 15 met at Velo Coffee Roaster's parking lot to carpool to the Trust's new bird lab. We parked, hiked in, and Velo's John Fentress made coffee for the group while bird-banders Lizzie Goodrick and John Diener educated the group on all aspects of bird-banding. We caught some great birds!
Check out our latest bird-banding photos on Facebook! (You don't need Facebook to see these).
We got local photographer Kevin Livingood out to the bird-banding lab to take photos. Here are the beautiful shots he came up with!
The Trust partnered with Olive Bean Natural Grocery & Cafe to host a dinner in celebration of the bird research the Trust has recently conducted. April, owner of Olive Bean, served Colombian black beans & rice with spiced briscuit, sweet fried plantains, and pineapple polenta cake. We had a great turnout, as you can see. We plan to have more collaborative events in the future, so stay tuned to our event page!
Holland Youngman, the UTC Graduate Student conducting our Cerulean Warbler research, has been out in the field since mid-May conducting point counts. Her protocol includes visiting set locations every single day and listening for birds for ten minutes at each stop. We have not heard any Ceruleans yet, but we are not giving up! We'll be adjusting Holland's protocol to determine presence/absence of the bird in a different way.
Ceruleans were last recorded in the Gorge in the late 1990s, when the last thorough bird survey was completed. If Ceruleans have left our forests in the past decade, we need to know WHY. Because Ceruleans are an indicator species, their leaving tells us that our forests are not healthy and our forest management plans need to be reworked.
Come out to The Farmer's Daughter on Tuesday, June 17th to try the new Cerulean Warbler coffee that Velo Coffee Roasters has sourced from the Cerulean Warbler's wintering grounds in Colombia! Read more on the coffee here!
Sunny Montgomery at the Times Free Press's publication Get Out Magazine wrote an article about us! Read it here.
After a week of building, the Tennessee River Gorge Trust's Bird-Banding Lab is COMPLETE!
This lab will serve as the home base for bird-banders John Diener and Lizzie Goodrick to conduct longterm bird monitorings in the Gorge. Soon, we will know exactly which birds pass through the Gorge during migration and which stay here to breed! We anticipate that our bird inventorying process will continue for at least ten to fifteen years. After the first few years of inventorying, the Trust will use the data to better manage our forests to promote the survivorship of our birds.
For all you people who have eagerly been awaiting the Cerulean Warbler Coffee from Velo Coffee Roasters, this post is for you! The shade-grown coffee beans are on their way and should be delivered this week. (Click here to read about the Organic Popoyan coffee beans we're getting!) Once delivered, Andrew Gage will roast the beans and have them for sale around the first week of June. Assuming all goes well, the coffee will be available for puchase at our annual event, Not JUST Another Gorgeous Evening!
The bird banding lab is nearly finished! Check out how much progress we've made in THREE days!