The new Web site for Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History went live on Groundhog Day 2000 with Installment #1 of "This Week at Hilton Pond." Our initial posting included a Woodchuck cartoon (below right) and simply stated the site "saw its shadow but--unlike groundhog weather maven Punxsutawney Phil--it WILL be staying up for the remaining six weeks of winter, and for a long time thereafter!"

Little did we know that--almost 11 years later--we'd have posted 501 photo essays about everything from hurricanes to hummingbirds and locations from Canada to Costa Rica and even Japan. Despite accounts of international travel, our basic goal from 2000 remains the same today: "To offer a weekly photo essay about some interesting plant, animal, or phenomenon at the Center in the hope of encouraging our on-line readers to get out into the world of nature--even if it's 'only' in their own backyards." In other words, our main emphasis remains on nature at Hilton Pond and in the Carolina Piedmont, and we hope our on-going musings have provided our many Web site visitors with new knowledge about natural history close to home.

We cherish those literally millions of visitors and their kind e-mail and phone comments through the years. We had planned for last week's 500th on-line edition to be a retrospective of more than a decade's worth of photo essays, but a major snow event in the Carolina Piedmont led us to write instead about several amazing weather-related events; thus, we held the reminiscing until this week's installment, as follows:

"This Week at Hilton Pond" began in February 2000--18 years after we moved to what we now call Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History. After a lifetime of teaching high school and college biology we made a career change to science education consulting and ornithological research. Our belief is there's no sense learning new things about nature unless that knowledge is shared with others--something we did on a day-to-day-basis with students in our classroom. Taking advantage of opportunities afforded by the World Wide Web, we decided one way to satisfy our "teaching fix" would be to use the Hilton Pond Web site to publish a regular Internet article--an on-line spin-off of the "Piedmont Naturalist" newspaper column we wrote for several years in the late 1980s.

We knew from the success of our "Piedmont Naturalist" columns--some of which appeared in a now out-of-print book (right)--that folks were eager to read about natural history happenings. They were especially curious about creatures they encountered on their very own doorsteps or on walks in the local park, so we decided our new Web-based photo essay should help us meet the mission of Hilton Pond Center: "To conserve animals, plants, habitats, and other natural components of the Piedmont Region of the eastern United States through observation, scientific study, and education for students of all ages." Natural happenings in the Carolina Piedmont remain our main emphasis, of course, but we can't avoid an occasional installment about interesting things we encounter on consulting gigs across the U.S. or during our hummingbird research in Central America.

And so, almost 11 years ago, we committed to producing a regular on-line nature blog before the word "blog" (short for "Web log") was even invented. We decided to include lots of color photos--something no one else was doing at the time--and to keep people apprised of our long-term bird banding research by providing a tally of birds captured during the week (banded adult male Purple Finch, above left). Over the past decade many talented nature writers and photographers have followed our lead with informative on-line postings complete with color images, but we're proud "This Week at Hilton Pond" was a pioneer in this area and that it consistently remains in the top ten of more than 1,400 blogs monitored by the Nature Blog Network.

All text & photos © Hilton Pond Center

Hilton Pond, November 2001 (above)

When we produce each weekly photo essay we never know how the public will respond. Nearly every installment of "This Week at Hilton Pond" gets at least a thousand reads during the fortnight or so after we post it, but because each installment is permanently archived some editions receive MANY more visitors. Although not every installment contains a "hit counter" that monitors visits, most do--and we know pretty well which topics have been popular through the years. Popularity is a fickle thing, of course, and some photo essays we really liked or worked especially hard on have had relatively few hits, while others have surprised us. One thing is apparent: When we post a very esoteric or unusual nature topic that few other bloggers have written about or photographed, Google picks up on it and moves our photo essay high in the rankings. This increases page hits, of course, and satisfies us in ways only another Web-based "educator-naturalist" can truly understand.

The illustrated list below includes a photo, brief note, and hit number for every installment that has been viewed at least 12,000 times, although our Web counter showed dozens more with ten or eleven thousand visits; some of those are coming up rapidly and could join the "12,000 Hits Club" in just a few weeks. (Hit numbers were accurate as of the afternoon of 25 January 2011, but one photo essay moved up three spots in the rankings even as we worked on this current installment!)

Without further ado, here in ascending order are the 28 most-visited of our 500 previous editions of "This Week at Hilton Pond." If you haven't read--or can't remember--them all, just click on an installment's title and a copy of the original photo essay will appear in a new browser window.

Happy Reminiscing!