Over the past five years, Rick Huffines, executive director of the Tennessee River Gorge Trust, has documented a number of rare birds near Chattanooga. He has banded multiple songbirds that rarely travel through East Tennessee and spotted one swamp-loving crane that historically does not stray north of Florida, among others.
So, why are they here?
“If you make the assumption it’s because of climate change, you might be right and you might be wrong,” says Huffines, a bird researcher for more than 20 years.
Huffines believes his sightings are more about thoughtful interaction with a place – the Tennessee River Gorge, for example, which is where he made many of his discoveries. Not many bird-watchers traverse the gorge’s difficult terrain, he explains. For this reason, in 2014, TRGT chose a remote section to build its Bird Observatory.
There, biologists continue to monitor birds – and the birds continue to surprise.