Bill Hilton, Jr. - Noted Hummingbird Bander

BILL HILTON, JR. was twice named South Carolina Science Teacher of the Year and was honored as the state's Outstanding Biology Teacher. In 1998, The Charlotte Observer named Hilton a Carolinas "Guardian of the Environment" for a lifetime of trend-setting work in environmental education and conservation. In 2006 he received the "Outstanding Alumnus Award" from Newberry College, his undergraduate alma mater.

Hilton taught in Rock Hill and Fort Mill SC schools, and at the University of Minnesota, St. Olaf College, and Winthrop University. He helped start the residential South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics in Hartsville, which he served as biology instructor and director of student research.

Hilton continues his work as an educator through lectures and workshops he presents for students and teachers in schools and school districts and for other groups across the country; as a consultant in science curriculum design and implementation and in outdoor learning; and, as a widely published author on nature and education. He has a special interest in teaching science by integrating it into other subject areas.Hilton has studied extensively and trained students, teachers, and "citizen scientists" of all ages in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, and abroad in Australia, Canada, Colombia, and Costa Rica.

Hilton is based near York, South Carolina, at Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History (www.hiltonpond.org), a 501(c)(3) non-profit research, education, and conservation organization he founded on family property in 1982 and has served since as Executive Director. An active field researcher, Hilton has banded more than 50,200 birds of 124 species over 26 years just at Hilton Pond. He is one of only about a hundred scientists authorized to capture wild hummingbirds and has banded and released more than 3,600 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds at the Center since 1984. Beginning in December 2004, Hilton has led six groups of U.S. and Costa Rican participants on field excursions into Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica, where he is the first researcher to systematically band and observe ruby-throats on their wintering grounds in that country.

In September 1999 Hilton and the Center launched Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project, a cross-disciplinary initiative that builds international collaboration among students and teachers by using distribution and behavior of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Archilochus colubris, as core topics. This award-winning project--for which Hilton is Principal Investigator--is described on its Web site, www.rubythroat.org. Operation RubyThroat has received more than $350,000 in grants and donations from the National Science Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, ConocoPhillips Petroleum, Agilent Technologies, The Christensen Fund, Foundation for the Carolinas, corporations and small businesses, and private individuals. The project is also affiliated with The GLOBE Program (www.globe.gov), and Hilton is involved in GLOBE ONE--an unprecedented collaborative field campaign that trains teachers, students, and citizen scientists to study relationships between agricultural practices and the environment in Black Hawk County, Iowa.

Hilton is author of The Piedmont Naturalist, a volume of essays that won a small press award. His writings have appeared in major newspapers; periodicals such as Bird Watcher's Digest, WildBird, The Chat, Senior Directions, and South Carolina Wildlife; Bring Back the Birds (a primer on saving threatened species); and on various Internet Web sites. This Week at Hilton Pond, his on-going series of photo essays about nature phenomena in the Carolina Piedmont, has a large international following. He also publishes his research results in peer-reviewed professional journals (see Scientific & Education Publications). Hilton has been interviewed on U.S. and Canadian public radio and television broadcasts, wrote and produced "Hawk Mountain Naturalist" for an Allentown PA public radio station, and was writer and host for a popular Rock Hill SC-based television series about nature happenings in the Carolina Piedmont.

In 1988 Hilton was awarded an Earthwatch Teaching Fellowship to help study Honeyeaters (Aves: Meliphagidae) on Kangaroo Island, Australia. In 1991 he received a Cooperative Fellowship through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to conduct environmental education research. He also collaborated with the National Research Council in developing national science standards and continues to work with states and school districts to align curricula with those standards.

Hilton served as education director at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania and as director of education and research at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in North Carolina. He is a past member of the board of directors of the Catawba Lands Conservancy, is active with the Sierra Club, and serves on committees of the National Council for Science and the Environment in Washington DC and for the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign.

Hilton also works with outdoor learning and nature centers to design trails, interpretive exhibits, and comprehensive education programs. He trains center personnel in Socratic teaching methods to assure their visitors have genuine learning experiences. And he consults with non-profit organizations and school districts on fund-raising, grant writing, staff and board development, programming, media relations, and long-range planning.In addition to his professional workshops, grant writing, and consulting work, Hilton is a nationally sought-after speaker on diverse natural history topics (see List of Presentations); each August and September his Hummingbird Mornings are lauded by audiences across the U.S. In 2005 he taught on faculty for the National Wildlife Federation's annual Family Summit in New Brunswick, Canada. Later than year he was invited by ProAves Colombia to San Andres Island in the western Caribbean to train 60 Colombian conservationists in hummingbird capture, handling, and banding techniques.

Hilton has a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Newberry College (1970), which he serves as president of the Alumni Association and as a member of the College's Board of Trustees. He originated and was chair of the international John Bachman Symposium, which recognized Newberry's founder during the College's 150th anniversary beginning in April 2006. (Bachman, for whom Bachman's Warbler and Bachman's Sparrow are named, was a contemporary of John James Audubon and wrote the text for their three-volume Viviparous Quardupeds of North America.)

Hilton also earned a Master of Arts in Teaching in Biology from Winthrop University (1977), and a Master of Science in Ecology & Behavioral Biology from the University of Minnesota (1982), where he conducted a four-year field study of the behavioral ecology of Blue Jays, Cyanocitta cristata.

Hilton's job allows him to do all day what he likes best, so his vocational activities are almost indistinguishable from his hobbies: observing, photographing, writing, and teaching about nature. He also enjoys researching family genealogy and pedaling highways and byways of the Carolinas on his 20-speed carbon fiber Fuji road bike.