Dollars and Sense from K.E.ST.R.E.L President,
Bill Williams

The fall of 1995 resoundingly proved the value of the dollar. K.E.ST.R.E.L received a $7,000 grant from the Virginia Coastal Management Resources Program to support our first two research interns. The grant supplemented the volunteer services and donated supplies valued at $30,000. This puts a different face on the payoffs Kiptopeke's migration studies have offered so many for so long. In the past, the researchers and visitors who have come to this magical place for over thirty years carried the total financial commitment for their passion for birds.

Now, with grant funding, we can provide more systematic study and more and better interpretive programs. But payoffs for volunteer investments will continue and are not a matter of dollars and cents. Instead they are payoffs of sense: the sense of expectation for the next "goody bird' or raptor overhead; the sense of fascination that one-third of an ounce of two-month old feathers could leave a northern forest for southern destinations not previously visited; the sense of timing as species composition of the fall flight shifts in annually predictable patterns; the sense of anticipation as weather fronts and jet stream vagaries wend across the tranquil narrow spit of land that is the tip of the Eastern Shore; the sense of pride in being part of Virginia's leading avian field research station.

K.E.ST.R.E.L is committed to the continuation of this gathering of sense. The play of daylight creeping over the eastern horizon, spurred on by the whine of mosquitoes, has been a part of the September-to-November sensation for too many for too long not to honor it with a pledge to make it last. This special place filled with its special people and special birds and insects deserves recognition. Just as the passage of a soaring Red-tail over the pines has endured, the work at Kiptopeke has endured for more than three decades.

K. E.ST. R.E. L will ensure the work continues to bring value to the birds and visitors who pass through and also to our hosts, the people of Virginia's Eastern Shore.

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