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On 30 June 1982, Bill Hilton banded his first bird at Hilton Pond, North Carolina. The bird was a red-winged blackbird. Twenty-five and a half years later, Bill banded the 50,000th bird at Hilton Pond, the raspberry-colored house finch shown in Fig. 1. The date was 7 December 2007.
You can read the details about Bill's banding program and how and why he began the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History in "This Week at Hilton Pond" for 1-7 December 2007.
Each installment of The Citizen Scientist carries a synopsis of the prior month's installments of "This Week at Hilton Pond." You don't have to wait for The Citizen Scientist to appear before checking out Bill's latest reports, all of which are nicely written and packed with superb photographs.
Bill Hilton has demonstrated how a dedicated individual can make a major contribution to understanding and documenting the natural environment over an extended period of time. The Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History is a model for what citizen scientists can do to inform the general public about the natural world while conducting valuable observational research.
To find out more about Hilton Pond, visit Bill's web site. It's a visit you'll not soon forget.
Forrest M. Mims III. 
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