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| fall 2010 meeting. . . |
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It was like riding a bicycle, albeit the chain sported a rusty glaze and got snagged on some of the gears. The society's first fall meeting since 2002 attracted 135 of the binocular-toting, field-guide packing faithful to Jekyll Island for the biggest GOS event since at least the mid 1990s. We devoted the past seven Octobers to arranging field trips and hosting guest speakers for the coastal festival, so when GOS proposed to resurrect the former fall meeting tradition earlier this year, it was no surprise when some questioned whether a society solo event in fall would succeed. Our files tell us that the first GOS fall meeting occurred in Savannah in 1937, so fall gatherings are as old as the society. The group's enduring affair with Jekyll Island began with a spring meeting there in 1948, a year after the state purchased the island from the Jekyll Island Club and six years before the causeway was built linking the island to the mainland like an umbilical cord. We now take that linear Boat-tailed Grackle magnet for granted, impatiently hurdling along its six-mile length in our eagerness to get to the south beach and the amphitheatre pond. But if you wanted to see the shorebird flock on the island's south beach 60 years ago, or the Wood Stork nestlings bellowing for food from the peak of the now dead pine at the pond, you would have had to rent a boat. A few scattered society meetings cropped up on the island in the mid 1960s and early 1970s, but GOS didn't embrace this charming state park as an annual roosting destination until the 1980s. For the next 22 years, the membership could generally count on migrating to Jekyll Island each October, though the declining state of the island's hotels sometimes created more amusement than the meeting attendees bargained for. With this historical detour in mind, you'll understand when I say that our meeting on Jekyll Island this past October was a homecoming for the society. And what a homecoming it was. The Cornell Lab folks had reserved Little
St. Simons Island for some form of feathered ritual for the weekend, so we
lost the most popular destination right at the start of field trip
planning. But the trips schedule was bulging with other tantalizing
destinations that spanned the entire Georgia coast, from Little Tybee
Island to Cumberland Island. If you were there and still doubted this rumored assertion, all doubts evaporated when Jon gave his "Gull Identification 101" course at the banquet. Birders are notorious for the use of jargon, so I know that more than a few of us gleefully left the banquet hall that night, because Jon had armed our mental dictionaries with at least two new pages' worth of ornithological tongue twisters. In addition to meeting Jon, who arrived on the island chauffeured by Bruce Hallett, Jeannie Wright, and some of our other Atlanta-area members (I did compare him to a rock star...), another highlight for me that weekend was meeting GOS grant recipient Dallas Ingram, who presented the Friday night program describing her research on the relationship between poultry farms and disease transmission in Wild Turkeys (see the article in this newsletter). I spent the final day of the meeting co-leading a field trip to Sapelo Island with Mal Hodges, one of my favorite birding buddies and a guy who certainly doesn't need my help. That trip was particularly special for me because, after being thwarted on several previous trips to Sapelo, I finally saw a chachalaca in Georgia. In fact, I saw three of them, including one bird that stood on the edge of the road 30 feet away and stared at us, as if we were the creatures who didn't belong on the island. I have seen the species before - in Tobago - where on the third consecutive day of being jolted awake by a flock (seriously) of them bellowing outside my hotel window at o'dark thirty, I was nearly moved to commit a violent act, but that's another story. What a thrill it was this time to see them one by one launching themselves from tree to tree, sort of like winged monkeys. As always, I thank the many gracious and skilled members who led the field trips. Thank you, too, to the executive committee members - Bill Lotz, Jeannie Wright, Steve Holzman, Ashley Harrington, and Darlene Moore - who jumped into the trenches to organize the meeting and to handle the last-minute crush of folks registering before the evening programs. A special thank you goes to Dan Vickers for not only arranging the hotel contract and banquet, but also for being daring enough to voluntarily manage all of the meeting and trip registrations. I'll never question your devotion to the society, Dan, but we need to talk about your sanity. Thank you to all of the members who showed up to support GOS' return to its former fall meeting tradition. Because your enthusiasm was convincing, we have made reservations to meet again at Villas by the Sea during October 7-9, 2011. Come be with us again at the society's fall home. -- Bob Sargent
Steve Holzman & Bill Lotz, Compilers The following table contains a
combined list of the species
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2/2011
