BirdCapeMay.org

With Pete Dunne
on Racoon Ridge

It’s mid-March, and Pete and I have finally honored a longstanding promise to each other, that we would both sometime hike up to Raccoon Ridge, the venerated hawk watch where we first met briefly in the fall of 1975. Pete came up before dawn to my place in Rockaway, in Morris County, and together we drove out Route 80 to Blairstown, and then out to the Kittatinny Ridge.

Though not nearly as famous as Hawk Mountain, Raccoon Ridge (or simply ‘Coon) has just as long a history in the annals of hawk watching—and hawk shooting. The name does not come from an established place name found on any map, but rather was made up by the founders—early Urner Ornithological Club members in the 1930s—who feared that a locally-familiar name would get out to the local hawk shooters of the day. The location remained vague when Pete set out to find it on his own in 1975. He also came across a small group of hawk watchers there, including storied Urner member Floyd Wolfarth, who became his mentor, and about whom Pete has written many times.

Since the traditional access to ‘Coon is currently closed, we drove up to Catfish Pond and the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Mohican Outdoor Center, which is on the Appalachian Trail west of Blairstown.

RR: We’re at Catfish Pond on the Appalachian Trail, about two miles north of Raccoon Ridge—and you’ve never been to this spot?
PD: I’ve probably passed my binoculars over this point about half a million times, but, no, I’ve never been here. It’s great to be a resident in a state where you’ve lived all your life, and you think you know it…and here we are at a place I’ve never been.

RR: Contrary to what the forecast said, the weather looks OK.
PD: It’s blowing west-southwest right now, which will be good if we get a little more southerly on it…I definitely want to go to Little Coon, where we put Floyd’s cairn. And to Coon 3, a place I found that’s further north, down the eastern side a little, with a great view of the eastern side of the ridge and the Walnut Valley. It’s out of the wind and toasty warm with rocks to sit on, and the birds are often close coming off Walnut Bluff, so you can see plumage details, which were so important back then with my rudimentary skills.

We head out on the trail and I immediately regret my choice of clothes—winter parka, wool, fleece—and physical condition: I haven’t been hiking since last October. I’m drenched and breathless in a quarter-mile, while Pete, in jeans and a sweater, strides ahead.

RR: When did you do that first spring hawk watch on ‘Coon?
PD: March 1 to April 30, 1976, and another count in 1977. I should have had the sense to extend it into May, but New Jersey Audubon didn’t have money in the budget for another month….

RR: And we didn’t know back then that the hawks were still migrating in May…you might have had a kite….
PD: Back then if I had a Mississippi Kite I probably wouldn’t have known it…or blown it off as a Peregrine.

We have now hiked to what Pete calls ‘Coon 3, and I have gotten most of my wind back. It looks out over the lower reservoirs of the Yards Creek Generating Station, a pumped-storage hydro plant built in 1965 which was ( until late 2001) the usual point of access for Raccoon Ridge—it’s been closed to casual visitors since 9-11.

Hundreds of migrant Canada Geese are leaving the area, heading up to the ridge, and going north; an adult Bald Eagle is cruising over the water down below....

RR: So you used this spot in the spring hawk counts?
PD: Beginner that I was, it took me awhile to realize that I could wander away from Big Coon and Little Coon, but I could see that in the spring that the birds were on this side…and on a northwest wind they were just not using the ridge like they were in the fall…thermal production is so good in spring, hawks were spread out all over the Walnut Valley, though Ospreys were good on the ridge.

RR: What was your total that spring?
PD: About 2,800 birds, and there were at least fifteen days, most of them in March, when I had zero birds, and those days were usually the coldest days; the hawks usually only came when it was warmer…with a south wind blowing….

RR: Did you go home each day, or did you camp out here?
PD: A little of both…sometimes I slept in the tent, or under the stars on nice nights, and a few times in really bad weather I stayed in Schultz’s Cabin* down below.

*A stone cottage—now in complete ruins, but mostly a wreck even back in the 70s— located about halfway up the ridge, and often used by the early hawkwatchers.

RR: When did you get the idea of the Hawks in Flight book?
PD: I really don’t remember a specific time…it’s probably something that I thought about doing when I first was learning the hawks back in ’75, because it was so difficult and frustrating…and many authorities were not much help.

I do remember, around 1978, writing letters to Floyd, Howard Drinkwater, Chan Robbins, and others, asking their opinion about getting a compilation of their ideas in print, an anecdotal thing about hawk ID… Harold Axtel thought I was being presumptuous…this young upstart—but he said it politely…Howard Drinkwater said he didn’t have anything he could teach me, that I’d gone beyond what was known up to that point about hawk identification.

Pershing Hofslund from Duluth sent me something interesting…He said if you’re debating whether a bird you’re looking at is either a Gyrfalcon or a goshawk: If it flies into the woods it’s not a Gyrfalcon. And that got me going, because that is using behavior to identify a hawk from a distance—something new.

RR: How did Clay Sutton and David Sibley come to the book?
PD: Clay and I used to sit around a lot—we tossed back a lot of brews together—and sometime in the late 70s, early 80s, we started to talk seriously about a book on hawks in flight. David had come to Cape May in 1979 and was living at Northwood, and he already had this great reputation as a birder and bird artist (at nineteen)…The three of us just brainstormed the thing. I did many of the write-ups, Clay particularly did Red-tailed Hawk…he knew so much about the plumages of that bird…and kites….

David cranked out the drawings in a short time…he worked upstairs at Northwood, and from time to time he’s come down, look at a slide, and go back upstairs, like a monk to his cell.

RR: I often still see fresh copies of Hawks in Flight—which came out twenty years ago—on the hawk watches of the East.
PD: I think it’s still a useful work. We produced a book that was very different…we’ve been told by people that it was catalytic, that it completely changed the way they looked at birds…I think it’s sold about 80,000 copies over the years, a lot for that kind of book.

RR: Have you ever done a revision of it?
PD: There is a manuscript completed, and has been awaiting revision for quite a while…When we did the first edition, we were all like a bunch of short-order cooks with little else to focus on, putting together a lunch order. Now we’re like three well-known chefs at a banquet, with lots of stuff in our lives…The last five percent of any project is the most time consuming.

We have hiked up to Little Coon by this time, and there are a lot of bluebirds around, more than I can ever remember being here, calling, and the males singing their jagged spring song. The vultures are up in numbers, an adult Red-shouldered Hawk goes by, and a calling raven, the wind is now coming from the south, and it’s begun to warm up. Pete shows me the small cairn where Floyd Wolfarth’s ashes were placed after his death in 1987 and we place a few chunks of the old Silurian rock on it.

RR: Why is Raccoon Ridge so important to you?
PD: This is hallowed ground for me. You know how sometimes there are times in your life when all your lines cross at a point? All of mine crossed on this ridge…After college I was looking for something to engage me—I had the necessary skills, thankfully the great eyes to become a good hawkwatcher, the free time, enough money to scrape by on, so in 1975 I was here. And there were a bunch people here who taught me so much, who became part of my social structure and became friends…Floyd took me under his wing, and all that winter he taught and showed me places and things on the Delaware, and the next spring and summer we birded together all over North Jersey.

RR: You can’t learn like that in any other way....
PD: No. And nothing was known about spring hawk migration, so in October 1975 I said to myself I was going to do something about it…And on that spring 1976 hawk watch realized that I was a pioneer, I was doing something that no-one had done before.

RR: I know; I was so jealous of you at the time.
PD: And I can still come back to it…Raccoon Ridge is still here, and pretty much the same now as it was in 1975.

RR: I remember you became a really good hawkwatcher very quickly in those years.
PD: I really did…I remember Fred Tilly. He was a friend of Floyd’s who was very skilled, with many years of experience, and I admired him a lot. One day in spring ‘76 a bird came by and Fred said “red-tail”, and then I looked and said “broad-wing.” He looked again, smiled, and said I was right—I was thrilled.

Another Red-shouldered Hawk sails by, and a Cooper’s Hawk, and as we head back north on the trail a Black Vulture jumps off the ridge, sails around us, and comes back to where it flushed. Black Vultures now nest on the Kittatinny Ridge, along with Common Ravens, and I point that out….

RR: You probably never had either of those species back then.
PD: In 1977 I had the ninth and tenth N.J. records for Black Vulture, and I did see raven. Also a Sandhill Crane, something rarely heard of on a hawk watch back then.

When we are nearly back at our starting point, Pete jumps, shouts, and points at—a grouse, an owl, a rattlesnake?

PD: Mourning Cloak! First of the year!
RR: I don’t think I’ve ever seen you point out a butterfly.

Who knew?