Milton N. Hopkins

Who was Milton N. Hopkins?

Milton Newton Hopkins Jr was a farmer in southern Georgia, in the south-eastern United States, as well as a conservationist, naturalist, and author, who had a long association with the Georgia Ornithological Society.

Hopkins grew up in Fitzgerald, Georgia. He developed an interest in birds from about eight years of age and spent much time exploring the countryside around his home town. He became a member of GOS in 1939, when he was 15, and contributed his first field note to its journal The Oriole in 1942.

Hopkins served in the Navy in World War II, in the Pacific theatre. He was on a destroyer in Tokyo Bay when Japan surrendered. After the war he made use of the G.I. Bill to study zoology at the University of Georgia, eventually achieving a master's degree in 1951.

Hopkins was known primarily as an ornithologist, and was editor of The Oriole 1960-1965, and received the Society's Earl R. Greene Award for outstanding contributions to Georgia ornithology. He published numerous observations of birdlife in South Georgia over the years, and was good friends with many preeminent southern naturalists, notably Herbert L. Stoddard, author of The Bobwhite Quail: Its Habits, Preservation and Increase, the standard reference on Bobwhite Quail. In 1975 GOS published Hopkins' book, The Birdlife of Ben Hill County, Georgia and Adjacent Areas.