This Week at Hilton Pond
Bill Hilton Jr.
Executive Director
Hilton
Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History
Bill Hilton is a naturallist's naturalist.
He is widely known for his hummingbird studies, in particular
his Operation RubyThroat:
The Hummingbird Project. The Citizen Scientist
will greatly benefit from Bill's new series. Editor.
In late 1981, I was about to finish up an
extended study of behavioral ecology of blue jays (Cyanocitta
cristata) as part of my graduate work at the University
of Minnesota. On my primary site at the University’s
Cedar Creek Natural History Area, I banded and color-marked
more than 1,500 blue jays and found that species’ densest
known nesting concentration—an annual average of more
than 100 nests in a 60-hectare area. Despite this success,
after what four very long, very cold winters studying jays
in the Minnesota boondocks, my wife Susan, five-year-old Billy
III, and I were looking forward to returning home to significantly
balmier South Carolina, where I planned once again to teach
high school biology.
Bill Hilton, Jr., Executive Director of the Hilton Pond Center
for Piedmont Natural History
Hiltons met a Twin Cities realtor who in
turn contacted a colleague in York County, South Carolina,
where we had lived and worked prior to moving to Minnesota.
We challenged the Carolina real estate agent with an interesting
set of requirements for our prospective new home: Several
hectares of land where I could continue my field ornithology
work; some sort of water feature (live stream or pond); a
variety of vegetation, including a few mature trees; a livable
house in good condition; and, of course, everything had to
be at a price affordable to a family that had been living
on a tight graduate student budget for four years. The realtor
said she was up for the challenge, except we Hiltons also
wanted to be sure the property had a southern magnolia tree
(Magnolia grandiflora)—a symbol we had left
the frigid northland behind and moved to a more hospitable
climate.
To make a long story short, the realtor did
a miraculous job in narrowing down property listings in York
County and suggested we look at a few homes that might meet
our needs. In December 1981, the agent described several inferior
listings before mentioning a place in York, South Carolina:
A circa-1918 farm house in excellent shape on 2.5 hectares
with a few old oaks, pines, hickories, growing around a 1-hectare
pond at an unbelievable asking price of $47,000. The description
seemed too good to be true, but when we took our initial tour
we knew it was the perfect place—especially since a
magnificent magnolia tree stood tall in the front yard! Earnest
money was put down, the deal was closed in mid-March 1982,
and that summer we Hiltons moved into our new homestead. We
were able to purchase some adjoining property shortly thereafter,
so today—25 years later—our holdings have expanded
to 5.5 hectares.
A view of the house from across Hilton Pond
The farmhouse we moved into was just that—the
residence of farming families that had grazed cattle or planted
rows crops such as corn, cotton, and soybeans for perhaps
a century or more. As a result that land wasn’t all
that diverse; in fact, except for the few big trees around
the farmhouse, the land was almost completely open and about
a year or two into vegetational succession. There was plenty
of knee-high broomsedge (Andropogon virginicus),
with a few blackberry thickets (Rubus spp.), expanses
of invasive japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica),
and a scattering of tiny seedlings of winged elm (Ulmus
alata), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua),
and eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana)—a
triumvirate of early successional tree species that seem to
do especially well in the red clay of western York County
South Carolina.
I determined early on there was no way I
was going to cut 5.5 hectares of grass to keep the property
open, so I laid out nearly 4 km of walking trails that meandered
around the property from one blackberry patch to another,
bypassing the tree seedlings in the hope they would grow much
larger. And grow they did, so much so that today nearly the
entire expanse of the Hilton land is covered by a mixed forest
of hardwoods and pines—all of which seeded in naturally
thanks to blowing winds and a variety of birds and small mammals.
Instead of trails that once snaked through sun-baked broomsedge,
my seemingly random paths now provide shady access to all
parts of the property and allow me and participants in my
Guided Field Trips to intensively investigate the diverse
bounty of flora and fauna.
There aren’t enough blue jays to do
a study similar to what I conducted in Minnesota, but by using
mist nets and various kinds of traps, I’ve captured
and banded more than 47,600 birds of 124 species! In all,
local checklists include 167 bird species (25 of which have
nested on the property), 25 mammals, 19 reptiles, 11 amphibians,
four fish, dozens of insects and other invertebrates, 47 trees,
26 shrubs, 18 vines, nearly 50 forbs, five ferns, and many
unidentified fungi, lichens, mosses, grasses, and aquatic
organisms that inhabit the pond. Because of my long-term site-based
banding work in the poorly studied South Carolina Piedmont,
the property was named an Important Bird Area by National
Audubon and Birdlife International.
For several years my bird banding and plant
and animal inventory work involved my advanced high school
science students, but I eventually took leave of the classroom
to establish in 1999 what is now called Hilton Pond Center
for Piedmont Natural History, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization
dedicated to education, research, and conservation. For the
past six years the Center has operated with private donations,
corporate contributions, and a series of small grants—one
of which was a 42-month award from the National Science Foundation
in support “Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project.”
Operation RubyThroat is a cross-disciplinary international
initiative that uses the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Archilochus
colubris, as a hook to excite students of all ages about science
learning. The NSF grant specifically was provided to allow
the Center to incorporate Operation RubyThroat as an observational
protocol within The GLOBE Program, through which students
and citizen scientists around the world collect data about
atmosphere, climate, soils, hydrology, land cover, and phenology.
While I trap ruby-throated hummingbirds at Hilton Pond Center
(more than 3,300 banded since 1984), students and citizen
scientists in ten countries from Canada to Panama also collect
data about when hummingbirds arrive and depart in spring and
fall migration, how dense hummingbird populations are in various
parts of their nesting and wintering ranges, whether the birds
prefer too feed at feeders or on various flower species, and
how successful hummingbirds are at breeding from year to year.
I still think of myself as an educator-naturalist,
so I really enjoy chronicling the ongoing activities of the
Center on its web site, particularly through “This Week
at Hilton Pond,” an original series of photo essays
about everything from birds and bees to flowers and trees
and natural phenomena I observe in the Carolina Piedmont—and
sometimes beyond. Beginning with the next issue, I’m
honored The Citizen Scientist will include one of
my nature photos and a short note about a recent “This
Week” installment—plus an Internet link so you
can visit the Hilton
Pond Web site and read more about a natural history topic
of interest. While teaching you about everyday occurrences
at the Center, I hope my photo essays will stimulate you to
go out and look for similar organisms and occurrences in your
own backyard.
Happy Nature Watching!
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Until the next issue of The Citizen Scientist,
check out the web sites for Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont
Natural History at http://www.hiltonpond.org
and "Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project"
at http://www.rubythroat.org
. If you’re interested in supporting the work of Hilton
Pond Center, you can make a tax-deductible contribution through
PayPal, by credit card via Network for Good, or by shopping
on-line at stores that give a small percentage of every sale
to the Center. Details are at http://www.hiltonpond.org/FundingMain.html.
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