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.)
***********************************************************************************************
"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"
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.
