The Legacy of a Red Hills Hunting Plantation: Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy

4. WCTV, the Spark

66                         Herbert Stoddard’s real estate partnership, Tift and Stoddard, was dissolved in 1948, leaving Stoddard time to concentrate on his consulting forestry practice. He had many friends and contacts among the local landowners and did not lack for clients. Although his son, Sonny, joined him briefly after the war, Sonny eventually went into the lumber mill business and made quite a success of it. In 1950, a young forestry student from the University of Georgia visited Stoddard and spent several days following him around while Stoddard marked timber and chased birds. The young man, who was from Thomasville, was Leon Neel. After he graduated that year, Neel came to work for Stoddard, beginning an association that continues to this day, even nearly 40 years after Stoddard’s death. Neel would take Stoddard’s ideas into the twenty-first century and would have a prominent role in the future of Tall Timbers Research Station. Meanwhile, though, Neel and his young bride, Julie, moved into the old tenant shack where Ed and Betty Komarek had once lived. The Neels became regulars at the Komarek ’s Sunday morning coffee klatch. Neel’s assistance enabled Stoddard to pursue his ornithological interests more than had been possible in the past, and Neel was an eager, apt pupil. Stoddard began a manuscript on the birds of Grady County, Georgia, and collected specimens to document his records. Stoddard also collected among the winter resident and transient species that were variable by race. The scores of specimens, each of which Stoddard prepared exquisitely , were sent to the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian, where professionals such as Thomas D. Burleigh made the difficult identifications of subspecies . The museum kept examples of each taxon and returned the others to Stoddard for his growing personal collection. In addition, Stoddard served two three-year terms on the AOU council, its governing body, in 1947 and 1952. Stoddard joined George Lowery’s moon-watching migration study in 1948 and continued observing into the 1960s. Lowery was an ornithologist and mammalogist at Louisiana State University. His method used watch stations that were manned by volunteers such as Stoddard. At full moons during migration times, watchers would focus 4 WcTV,thespark WCTV, the Spark · 67 a telescope on the moon and record the numbers and directions of birds they saw fly across the illuminated disk. Lowery and R. J. Newman pieced together the puzzle bits from their contributors into a coherent, continent-wide view of the mechanics of migration and how the waves of flights were influenced by weather patterns and topography. Stoddard and Neel maintained watches at Sherwood and along the Gulf coast. In May 1953, Stoddard entertained two famous guests at Sherwood, Roger Tory PetersonandJamesFisher .PetersonwastheauthorofthestandardfieldguidetoAmerican birds and Fisher was a prominent British ornithologist. They were in the midst of their epochal bird-seeking motor tour of North America, which they would later relate in their book Wild America. Stoddard made sure they saw more than just birds at Sherwoodandtheotherplantationstheyexplored .TheyrecalledoftheirvisitwithStoddard: “We had become deeply impressed by a rare demonstration of what private landowners can do in practical conservation. Here we had witnessed a perfect blend of enlightened forestry, farming, wildlife management—and gracious living” (Peterson and Fisher 1955). The specimens Stoddard was collecting and his local contacts allowed him to play a critical role in bringing Thomas D. Burleigh’s book Georgia Birds to print in 1958. Stoddard ’s Grady County specimens were the basis for much of Burleigh’s discussions of southwestern Georgia species, and Stoddard organized a list of subscribers from his plantation clients to fund the book. A grateful Burleigh dedicated the book to Stoddard.1 figure 4.1. Above: Leon Neel and Herbert L. Stoddard in the late 1950s. Photo courtesy of Leon Neel. figure 4.2. Right: Illustration of George H. Lowery’s moon-watch migration study method. Figure taken from Lowery (1951). Copyright © 1951 by the University of Kansas, Museum of Natural History. Used with permission. 68 · Part I. Tall Timbers: The Plantation Era figure 4.3. Dustcover for Georgia Birds. Collection of Robert L. Crawford. Especially pleasing was Stoddard’s collaboration with the artist and ornithologist George M. Sutton, who produced the plates for Georgia Birds. Sutton spent the spring and summer of 1952 as Stoddard’s guest in Grady County, and Stoddard collected many of the specimens Sutton painted so superbly. Sutton’s essay about his stay with...