Please bear with me! This information is relevant to the tn-birds archives. I
received this personal email from Bill Haley several days ago. I probably
should only include the pertinent information applying to Bald Eagles but, the
back story is almost as interesting so I included the whole post...
-------- Original Message ----------
From: Bill Haley <wgh@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "tenacbirder@xxxxxxxxxxx" <tenacbirder@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 6, 2018 at 11:57 AM
Subject: Sad farewell to an eagle watcher
Yesterday I attended the funeral of Milburn Varner, of Soddy-Daisy, TN. Milburn
lived down at the base of the mountain we drive up to get to the Soddy Mountain
Hawk Watch. Milburn was best known as a fantastic mechanic, guru of anything
MOPAR, and a drag racer in the 1960’s and 1970’s. He worked on several of my
cars over the years. In his garage sits a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, painted Plum
Crazy Purple (an actual color Plymouth used….do you remember it?). It has “Drag
Addict” professionally painted on the sides, and is a beautiful thing to look
at. It has less than 500 miles on it. The miles were added a quarter mile at a
time. I can well remember seeing that purple Barracuda scream down the quarter
mile at Optimist Drag Strip in the early ‘70’s. Roi Shannon and I went down
there several times to see him and the other drag racers battle it out. I know
for a fact that he was once offered $125,000 for that car and turned it down.
I’d say 99% of the people there yesterday knew him from this part of his life.
Milburn was not known to the birdwatching community, and he was
not really a bird watcher. I’d wager that not a single birder in this area knew
of him, or had ever heard his name. Even Jimmy and Cynthia have probably
forgotten it, even though they’ve heard me tell his story several times over
the years. You see, Milburn, a non-birder, but a good observer, was responsible
for one of the most surprising and interesting discoveries about the lives of
Bald Eagles in our area.
He was an early riser. A good number of years back, he called me one day and
told me Bald Eagles were flying out of the Big Soddy Creek gorge every morning
at first light. He invited me to come up to his place to see this. To be
honest, I thought he didn’t know what he was talking about, figuring maybe he
was seeing vultures, so I didn’t immediately take him up on his offer. A couple
of weeks later, Milburn called again, saying “Are you going to come up here to
see the eagles fly or not?” Well, when he put it that way, I decided I’d better
go up there, so I promised I’d be there the next morning. He told me I’d better
get there early, because they flew out at daybreak. The next morning, a cold,
clear day, I got there when Milburn specified. He came out from his house,
shook my hand and pointed up at the ridge over his house to two pine trees that
stuck up above the other trees. “They always fly out from right there. Watch
and you’ll see them in a little bit.” No sooner had he said that, than five
Bald Eagles flew out past those pine trees! To say I was surprised was an
understatement. Milburn was the first person to observe that Bald Eagles spend
the nights in creek gorges in our area, flying out to the river at first light,
then returning back to the gorges each night. Before then this was a behavior
unknown to any birdwatcher in Chattanooga!
I went back up a few days later, and was astonished to see 16 eagles fly out of
the gorge over Milburn’s house that morning over a 15-20 minute period. The
next weekend, I had people stationed at first light where they had a good view
of 4 creek gorges, the area stretched all the way from North Chickamauga Creek
in the south to Rock Creek in Sale Creek, to the north. Lo and behold, in the
space of less than 15 minutes, they saw a total of 50 Bald Eagles leave those
creek gorges!
So Milburn, goodbye my friend, and thank you for adding to our ornithological
knowledge. I will long remember you and know now that your spirit is flying
with those eagles…..that is when you are not blasting down a drag strip
somewhere up in heaven.
Bill Haley/Jimmy Wilkerson
Chattanooga, Hamilton co., TN
