This page is for all members.
Anyone who has photos of NTOS activities or interesting birds is encouraged to add them to this page.

PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM

BYAND OF NTOS MEMBERS

Activities

Go to Birds (and other living things)



Members of NTOS enjoy a fine spring day at one of Nashville's newest parks, Beaman Park, located in northern Davidson County. Our trip in late May found the breeding season in full swing. The Louisiana Waterthrush already had at least one fledgling, actively bobbing it's tail as it waited to be fed. Nearby, Kentucky Warblers were busily feeding nestlings. While males of various species, including both Tanagers and several Wood Thrush, were proclaiming their territory.



Snow Geese, Limestone Bay, Wheeler NWR
Limestone Bay, Wheeler NWR
We started 2006 with a trip on January 21 to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Decatur, Alabama. One highpoint of the day was a beautiful Vermillion Flycatcher that was wintering there.  However, at Limestone Bay, we found the thousands of Snow Geese, about half the Blue morph, nearly as impressive. Here the geese have taken flight after an immature Bald Eagle flew by the flock.

Pace Point, November 2005
On November 19, 2005 we joined the Wariota Audubon Chapter from Clarksville, TN at the Big Sandy Unit of the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge looking for waterfowl.


Rocky Point, Big Sandy, TN NWR

Here Mike Todd, who led the joint expedition, and Richard Connors scan the lake near Rocky Point for loons. We found lots of Common Loons, of course, but the prize was the last bird of the day, a  Pacific Loon.

NTOS Fall Flock - September 2005


September 25, 2005


Our annual Fall Flock was held at Shelby Bottoms. Here Rob Lane tries to "fuss" up a Sedge Wren skulking in the brush.

January 27, 2001 found us on a favorite winter destination, Cross Creeks, WMA near Dover. Susan Hollyday has voluteered at the refuge for several years. Here she prepares to show us a sleepy Screech Owl, resting in a convenient Wood Duck Box.

August is shore bird time. Since we went west in 1999, we went east, to Rankin Bottoms, WMA, August 26, 2000. Here Cass Kennedy and Gary Casey scan for shore birds. 


The weekend of June 17, 2000 took NTOS to East Tennessee to look for  East Tennessee nesters, led by Rick Knight (2d from left) of the Herndon TOS chapter, Johnson City. Among the stops was the Veterans Hospital at Mountain Home which hosts a family of Barn Owls, who posed for Frank Fekel's camera, while he became a subject himself.

Winter means gulls and gulls mean the dams at Land-Between-the-Lakes in Kentucky. We joined members of KOS to bird the dams and surrounding area on Dec 11, 1999. Here we brave cold winds to scan Lake Barkley (left) and Kentucky Lake (right). This trip almost always produces "good" birds, whether its a rare gull, a Peregrine Falcon, or a Bald Eagle.


On October 16, 1999, we stayed close to home and explored a new area at the same time, as we toured the then unopened Beaman Park near Ashland City. Bob Brown (left) led us down the stream and over the mountain.  Though birds were scarce, we enjoyed an outing on a clear autumn day and looked at late wild flowers.


NTOS took a weekend trip to the "West Coast" of Tennessee, August 13-15, 1999. We met Memphis birder, Jeff Wilson, at "The Pits" in Memphis on Friday, but quickly decided that Reelfoot was where the action was. Here, Jeff Wilson and John Lowry scan the lake in front of Nancy Moore's B & B, Blue Basin Cove, formerly Backyard Birds. Among the finds that weekend was a hybrid heron, part Little Blue and part either Snowy or Little Egret. Saturday evening we watched approx. 400-500,000(!) Purple Martins and about 10,000 herons and egrets arrive at the Heloise Heronry.

These photos show Master Hummingbird Bander, Bob Sargeant from Alabama, banding a hatching year male Rufous Hummingbird at a home in south Brentwood, Williamson County on December 14, 1997. The Nashville area had several wintering hummers that year. We watched Bob band 3 hummers on this day, including a female Black-chinned, not far from this site, and another male Rufous in Lebanon.


 
Phillip Casteel searches a marsh for the elusive Virginia Rail. Phillip took many of the photos on this page.




 
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