If you weren't at the Park for Wildlife Weekend this year,
you missed another great event. Several great speakers gave excellent
presentations, and there was a variety of special activities to keep everyone
busy.
This year's event began on Friday night with a session
sponsored jointly by the
Bristol
Bird Club and Friends of Steele Creek. Dr. Fred Alsop was on hand to
talk about birds, birding, and his experiences as an ornithologist. An
ETSU faculty member for the past 34 years, Dr. Alsop is an internationally
recognized expert in the field. Among his many other accomplishments, he
is the author of the Smithsonian's Birds of North America as well as numerous
other field guides and birding publications. During his presentation he
gave a fascinating account of his interest in birds, sprinkled liberally with
his depth of knowledge of the subject, and beautiful photographs of many of
his favorite subjects. What made his talk especially interesting to many
of us in the audience wasn't how much he knows about the many species of birds
that nest and migrate through east Tennessee (which is vast!). Rather, it was
his pointing out just how much isn't known about many of the
common species of birds that we see so often. This was certainly one of
the most interesting and well received Wildlife Weekend presentations ever!
