Early History of the Soddy Mountain Hawk Watch site, by Bill Haley

Bill Haley wished to make a comment on our blog, but was required to open a Google account, so I offered to save him a bit of time, if he would rather email it, and let me post it. He called and said his comment was short, but sitting down to write the email stirred some memories, and the great story teller in Bill came forward, with some answers to questions many of you have asked. 

HOW DID THE HAWK WATCH ORIGINATE?

 

Whom better to hear the answer from, than the originator himself.  And if possible, we will look forward to his contributions to the page in the future.  For now - His email: (thank you, Bill, for this. You have no idea how many times we tell what little we knew of the story. So nice to hear it from you.)

 

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"I want to relate the very early history of the Soddy Mountain hawk lookout, and even go back a little further in my hawkwatching career. Starting in 1990 I spent time at Signal Point on Signal Mountain and the David Gray sanctuary in Sale Creek, which were hawk lookouts pioneered by Ken and Lil Dubke, my early hawkwatching mentors and the ones who trained me in the art of hawkwatching. Both hawk lookouts were pretty much hemmed in by trees, providing a “tunnel vision” experience.

 

In the fall of 1992, I sought to establish my very own new hawk lookout. After some exploring, I found a large boulder atop Raccoon Mountain, which I christened “Bill’s Rock”. It sits about 15 feet tall, is 20-25 feet wide, relatively flat and offers a pretty good view. I sometimes had deer grazing directly underneath my perch, unaware I was looking down on them. You can still see where Bills Rock is if you look at Raccoon Mountain from downtown Chattanooga. You’ll see three high power transmission towers side-by-side at the top of the mountain. Bill’s Rock is located underneath the middle one. However it was a bit difficult to get to – you have to walk out a private road towards a TVA microwave station and then blaze a trail for about 150 yards in the powerline right-of-way. Sometimes the TVA guards didn’t trust a person who spent a lot of time under one of their transmission towers with full backpack and cooler, looking through binoculars! (Go figure - and this was pre-9/11). Bill’s Rock provided a pretty spectacular view of downtown Chattanooga, and I saw some migrant hawks, but I felt the need to locate another, more accessible, spot.

 

I first stepped onto the bluff which was to become Soddy Mountain hawk lookout in early May 1993. A friend and I were participating in the North American Migration Count, the second Saturday in May. As soon as I walked out onto the level area near the sheer bluff that had been formed when the old Jones Gap Road was dead-ended during the creation of Hwy. 111, I knew this would be where I watched hawks that fall. Where we now sit would have once been right in the middle of the old road down the mountain! The view over the Tennessee River Valley to the east is spectacular. What really sold me, however, was the relatively unobstructed view for 360 degrees around the lookout. It didn’t hurt that you could drive up to within 25 feet of where we sat either. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

From 1993-2006, I reported Soddy Mountain totals to the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA). For several years I became the Southern Appalachians Editor for the annual HMANA report, compiling all hawk lookout totals in the Appalachians. Soddy Mountain was often the most southerly reporting lookout in the Appalachian mountains. Early on it was only me, but I gained helpers and began training a new bunch of dedicated hawk watchers. I’m proud to say that Soddy Mountain has the distinction of being the only hawk lookout in Tennessee that has ever been monitored regularly for the entire fall migration season (Sept.-early Dec.) and for the entire spring migration (March-mid-April). During this period we routinely put in between 200-300 hours annually, and the data collected gives a more complete picture of raptor migration than ever before. Unfortunately, challenging work schedules and poor health of some watchers made regular monitoring at the site problematic and I eventually stopped sending data to HMANA. Thankfully, the hawkwatching hasn’t stopped and continues on a reduced basis, with most effort these days in September to monitor the sometimes spectacular Broad-winged Hawk flight.

 

My favorite part of the fall migration was always the late season flights of accipiters, eagles and buteos. As I always jokingly tell Jimmy Wilkerson, the hawk migration doesn’t end in September.  Forget the huge numbers of Broad-wings (and hawkwatchers) of September. October and November means smaller totals, but sometimes some very rewarding and spectacular sightings. My favorite from November 2013? A gorgeous textbook immature Golden Eagle which passed about 100 feet out from the bluff and slightly above eye level. As it passed, it turned its head and looked at me. Or was it the day that four immature Bald Eagles played overhead, with many aerobatics as one would dive on another? The one that was “attacked” would then flip upside down and lock talons with the instigator. All the while they vocalized repeatedly as they played. These are sights that would have been an extreme rarity only 40 years ago when Bald Eagles were almost on the verge of extinction in the Eastern United States, and I thank God they’ve made such a remarkable comeback. It is not uncommon in 2013 to see several in a few hours from our lookout.

 

There have been countless such wonderful sightings over the years, and I’ve been lucky to be mentor to others, such as Jimmy and Cynthia Wilkerson and Harold Birch, who carry on the hawkwatching tradition at Soddy Mountain. I will always treasure the wonderful times we’ve shared and the fantastic things we’ve seen. We’ve had some great moments on “the mountain”. They’ve ranged from funny, like the time we were yelling for Vaughn to show him his very first Broad-wing kettle. Unbeknown to us, he had left the lookout and was sitting in his truck eating peanut butter crackers. Some were sad, such as the loss of a very good friend who toppled off the bluff in a great gust of wind. I sure did miss that folding lawn chair! You never know what you’ll see at Soddy Mountain, but you’ll always see SOMETHING.

 

Bill Haley"

 

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I am posting it here to the blog, but will also make it a permanent page in a few days, so everyone can know the whole of it every time they check us out!  Happy Hawk Hunting.