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The hustle and bustle of organizing the fourth coastal birding festival is now a fleeting memory, but not the birds we saw, the speaker we heard, the seminars we attended, or the great weather we experienced. No, that wasn’t a typo – we held a festival and it didn’t rain. No tropical storm roared up the coast, Little St. Simons Island wasn’t flooded, and, get a grip on your chair, the boats running to Blackbeard Island didn’t break down (Gasp!). Of course, before we go dissin’ tropical storms, we should pause first to recall that we had the highest species count (210) ever for a Georgia festival, even without trips to Little St. Simons Island, during last year’s “monsoon weekend.” This year’s species tally was a respectable 199 (see the complete list in this newsletter), and the tally of birders registered for the festival was 322, at least 70 of whom were GOS members. The latter figure is a bit misleading, though, as most of the field trip leaders were GOS members, and trip leaders were not required to register. More than 80 of the attendees were visitors to Georgia, representing 16 other states, the District of Columbia, Canada, and Scotland. While it’s obvious the festival isn’t growing dramatically, it’s equally obvious that it continues to be a popular draw, and not just at the local level. The popularity of this festival isn’t hard to understand, of course (Read: How could we possibly screw it up?). Attendees had nearly 50 field trips to choose from, including visits to at least 10 of the islands, there were 21 seminars covering everything from digiscoping to identifying beach invertebrates, and 32 exhibitors hawked their wares all through the weekend. One of the particularly special highlights was Saturday’s “Bird Conservation Summit,” aforum for exploring challenging management issues which featured talks by scientists concerning the conservation of Swallow-tailed Kites and Wood Storks, the role of citizen scientists in bird conservation, the impact of feral cats on wild birds, and an update on Georgia’s Important Bird Areas program. Saturday night highlights included Brad Winn receiving the Earle Greene Award (see the story in this newsletter), Peter Stangel’s hilarious introduction of the featured speaker, and a lesson on seabird ecology by Massachusetts Audubon’s Wayne Petersen, which should have been filmed for showing in a future PBS Nature special. Yes, it was that good, and Wayne pulled off his wonderful brand of magic using only a precariously perched 35 mm slide projector and a captivating sense of wit. Many people elected to skip the banquet but showed up afterwards to see Wayne’s program. Petersen groupies? The program ran past the time during which we would normally have done the species countdown, but nobody noticed or seemed to care. Speaking of caring, there’s one other interesting tidbit about attendee numbers I neglected to mention: 277 people traveled at least 50 miles to attend the festival, and most stayed at least two nights on or in the Jekyll Island area. In fact, figures from 39 evaluation sheets received after the festival indicated that, on average, people spent about $520 on food, lodging, and other expenses. What’s the point of all this numerical rambling? My point is that these figures reflect the power of ecotourism in action, and the Jekyll community certainly felt the impact. You may be aware that plans are afoot to develop a sizeable portion of southeastern Jekyll Island. This doesn’t bode well for the birds that use that area as stopover habitat, nor does it bode well for all the people like you and me who travel to that island each year to see and enjoy birds. Folks, if we care about birds and their future, we’ve got to be heard by community leaders in places like Jekyll Island. If you don’t think birdwatchers have much leverage, look again at the rough expenses summary I provided above. I hope to see you again in January on Tybee Island, and start making plans now to join us for next year’s festival (October 12-14, 2007), which will feature Dr. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, as our Saturday night speaker. By the way, if you have suggestions concerning ways in which we can improve the festival for next year, please send them to me at kywarbler@cox.net, or call me at 478-397-7962. See you in the woods and fields soon! Submitted by Bob Sargent
Bob Sargent and Steve Holzman, Compilers The following table contains a
combined list of the species
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07/2007
