Conservation Officers Report

Bill is one of Virginia's premier birders, and has served the state birding community in many capacities since the 1970s. He founded the Williamsburg Bird Club, and started the Williamsburg Christmas Bird Count in 1977, serving as compiler from 1977 through 1988, and again from 2007 to the present. He is a past president of the Virginia Society of Ornithology, and also founder and past president of the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory. He has also performed various other surveys and studies of birds and wildlife around the state for many years.

On his very first visit, Bill realize what a treasure of wildlife inhabits the park property. The variety of habitats offers up a diversity of plants and animals, the likes of which are seldom found in this part of Virginia. Shoreline habitat along the Chickahominy River, old growth forest, new and old cutovers, agricultural fields, and a 5-acre pond hidden away in the back recesses of the Park has provided some surprising finds.

On other early spring mornings American Woodcocks performed their aerial acrobatics, soaring high into the air, whistling their jaunty calls in the dawn, and fluttering to the ground to bob along the ground doing their strange mating dances to attract females. Another time, on a May morning, a female Wood Duck paraded by with her seven downy hatchlings in tow. Whip-poor-wills were still singing in during a September census, quite a late date for them to be vocal. A White Ibis was also at the beaver pond that month. The next month, four river otters were photographed as they frolicked in the beaver pond.