Members of the BCBC (Buchanan County Bird Club) were busy with several projects in 2005. Plans for the club’s hosting of the VSO (Virginia Society of Ornithology) annual meeting in the Breaks Park in May 2006 were finalized. This will be only the second time the meeting has been held west of Roanoke. As many as 125 – 150 birders from all over Virginia and surrounding states are expected to attend. Registrations for the event are already pouring in. The guest speaker will be the world-renowned expert on birdsong, Don Kroodsma.

Due to problems in Richmond the planned release of Peregrine Falcons within the Breaks Park for 2005 did not take place, but members of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries have been in contact with club president, Roger Mayhorn, and plans are already underway for the release of some young falcons within the park during June of 2006. Peregrines were wiped out in the Eastern U.S. in the 1950’s due to the use of the pesticide, DDT. The Breaks Interstate Park was the last place in the state where Peregrines nested. The returning of these raptors to their natural nesting grounds will be an historic and noteworthy event.

The number of Eastern Bluebird nest boxes erected in the area by bird club members went from 45 in 2004 to a total of 78 in 2005. The new nest boxes, poles and predator guards were donated by club members Johnnie and Betty Ratliff. Bluebirds, Chickadees, Tree Swallows and Tufted Titmice used the boxes during the nesting season. 353 eggs were laid in the boxes during the nesting season. 298 birds hatched. Only 266 birds lived to fledge from the nests due to late cold weather and predation by House Sparrows and Flying Squirrels.

In March 2005 bird club members worked with The Boy Scouts of the Whitewood area, teaching them how to identify birds and about the habitat that different species prefer.

Buchanan County Bird Club members, Ed and Michelle Talbott, Roger and Lynda Mayhorn and Dave Worley helped out on May 14 of 2005 with the Clinch Mountain Trails Birding Festival. These members led bird walks at Hungry Mother State Park, at the salt ponds of Saltville, and on Clinch Mountain near Hayter’s Gap. Thirty-one people took part in the walks and eighty-one bird species were counted.

Eight members of the BCBC traveled to the shores of Lake Erie during the weekend of May 21, 2005 to watch the spring migration of birds as they passed through Magee Marsh, a part of the Ottawa (county) National Wildlife Refuge in Ohio. Birds gather to feed in the marsh and along the lake shore before continuing their northward migration across and around the lake into Canada.

During June of 2005 the Virginia Society of Ornithology conducted a breeding bird survey within the counties of Wise and Russell counties. Club members, Ed Talbotts II and III of the Grundy area, along with member Richard Kretz of Elk Garden, helped with the survey by hiking 7 miles of high elevation terrain near Laurel Bed Lake of the Clinch Mountain Wildlife Area in Russell County. The team logged 47 species. Club members, Roger and Lynda Mayhorn of Compton Mountain and David Raines of the Breaks, birded the area along Route 640 from the eastern end of Russell County to the town of Lebanon. They logged 73 species.

On June 11, 2005 BCBC members joined with the Bibbee Nature club of Bluefield to look for birds on Horn Mountain in the Whitewood section of Buchanan County. The group found several interesting species of birds. Horn Mountain, Compton Mountain and Poplar Gap Park are part of the Mountain Birding and Wildlife Trail, which is spread over several counties of Southwest VA. These three areas were accepted as part of the Birding and Wildlife Trail of Virginia after having been nominated by members of the Buchanan County Bird Club.

The first concrete evidence of Northern Mockingbirds nesting within Buchanan County was obtained on June 29, 2005, when Roger Mayhorn photographed a parent mockingbird bird feeding two fledglings in his yard on Compton Mountain. A few days later Johnnie and Betty Ratliff of Little Prater saw a pair of mockingbirds in their yard feeding three young ones. The species had been seen with increasing frequency within the county for the past few years, and though it was suspected that the species nested here, this was the first solid evidence. Northern Mockingbirds have been nesting in the surrounding counties of Tazewell, Russell and Pike County in Kentucky for many years.

An unusual hybrid species of warbler was found and photographed by Roger Mayhorn on Compton Mountain on July 5, 2005. Warblers are very active, small, colorful songbirds that either nest in or pass through the area during migration. A pair of young Brewster’s Warblers, a hybrid produced by the mating of a Golden-winged Warbler and a Blue-winged Warbler, was observed being fed by an adult Blue-winged Warbler. This is only the second time one of these hybrids has been found within Buchanan County.

Roger & Lynda Mayhorn were asked to help out with teaching young people about nature, when the VA Department of Game, the National Turkey Federation and the Buchanan Hunting Club sponsored an outing for young people at Keen Mountain Park on June 25, 2005. Roger & Lynda took young people on bird walks around the park and explained how to identify the different species.

The first Wilson’s Warbler ever reported in Buchanan County was found by Roger Mayhorn in his yard on the evening of September 7. Roger was able to get a couple of photos of the bird as it hopped around in a Viburnum ( Snowball bush) before it flew from the area. On September 22 David Raines found another Wilson’s Warbler at his home in Happy Hollow of the Breaks community. This warbler was observed near a small stream on the Raines’ property. It makes one wonder what natural events brought two Wilson’s Warblers and probably many more to this area at this particular time, when none had ever been reported here in years past.

On September 30 Roger and Lynda Mayhorn were driving along a ridge in Dickenson County, not far from John Flannagan Reservoir. They noticed a bird sitting on a power line to the right of the highway. Roger thought at first that it was a Mourning Dove, but soon realized that the bird was larger than a dove, and that the body shape was different. This light gray bird had dark coloring around the eyes, had a hooked beak like a hawk. The Mayhorns realized that they were looking at a Mississippi Kite, a raptor that normally lives along the Atlantic coast, the southern coast of the U.S. and along the Mississippi River waterway. As far as is known by members of the Buchanan County Bird Club, this species has not been recorded in the area before.

The Mayhorns hosted thirty-seven birders at their home on Compton Mt on Saturday, September 10 during their annual Warbler Day. Birders came from as far away as the eastern shore of Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee to watch the different migratory species pass through the Mayhorns’ property. The birds were cooperative with 60 species being counted for the day, many of which were the colorful warblers heading south to spend the winter.

On September 18 Ed Talbott III led a birding/hawk watching hike for the Clinch Mountain Trails Birding Festival to The Great Channels of VA atop 4200 foot Clinch Mountain. The Channels are a maze of walkways cut by nature into the forty foot high Clinch Mountain sandstone on Clinch Mountain a couple of miles from Raven Ridge Bed and Breakfast and Campground owned by Charles and Alona Kennedy. Along with Ed were his wife, Michelle, Charles Kennedy, Roger Mayhorn, Richard Kretz and Hungry Mother Park employee, Angela Fields. The birders counted eighty-seven passing Broad-winged Hawks, three Cooper’s Hawks, two Sharp-shinned Hawks, two Red-tailed Hawks and one Red-shouldered Hawk. These birds were heading southward, and some would go as far as South America, where they spend the winter months.

David Raines, Ed & Michelle Talbott, Marie Miller, Tom Dye and Roger and Lynda Mayhorn went to Birch Knob atop 3100+ feet Pine Mountain in Dickenson County to watch for migrating hawks on September 19th and 24th . More than 170 Broad-winged Hawks were observed as they flew past the new observation deck.

The Buchanan County Bird Club’s fourth annual Sparrow Day and picnic was held in October on the property of Billy Ray and Shirley Justus on Guesses Fork. Eleven species of mostly migrating sparrow species were found. A total of thirty-five bird species were found for the day.

On December 7th Roger and Lynda Mayhorn found and photographed two Horned Grebes, a type of duck sized waterfowl, on John Flannagan Reservoir in Dickenson County. This is only the second record of that species within Dickenson County.

Roger Mayhorn