Background
He was the son of wildlife artist Jacob Bates Abbott. Jackson Miles Abbott was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1920. He was the son of wildlife painter Jacob Bates Abbott.
ornithologist painter Zoologist
He was the son of wildlife artist Jacob Bates Abbott. Jackson Miles Abbott was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1920. He was the son of wildlife painter Jacob Bates Abbott.
He attended Swarthmore College for zoology. He graduated from the Officer Candidate School in August, 1943.
He is the only artist to ever place both first and second in the same year in the Federal Duck Stamp contest. The Jackson Miles Abbott Wetland Refuge at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax, Virginia was named in his honor. As a youth, Abbott lived in New England and southern California.
He came into birdwatching when he was six years old.
In 1941 he joined the United States Army and in 1942 he was stationed in the Caribbean. Foreign two years he designed and engineered camouflage for the Army.
Post-war, he became an intelligence officer and a field manual writer In 1949 he became a Technical Intelligence Specialist for the Army Map Service, working in of Korea.
In the United States Army Corps of Engineers he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Upon joining the Army in 1941, Abbott started the Annual Christmas Bird Count at Fort Belvoir. The count has taken place yearly, as part of the Audubon Society. He lived and worked in Alexandria, Virginia, where he studied birds living on the Potomac River and the surrounding area.
He focused on the American bald eagle in the upper Chesapeake Bay.
With the bald eagle, he studied their nest eggs. After observations, if an egg didn"t eventually hatch, the egg would be taken to a laboratory and tested for DDT exposure.
He bird ringed 1,400 birds during a seven-month period as part of a migration study by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. In the early 1960s he produced a "bird hazard survey" at Reagan National Airport for the Civil Aeronautics Administration.
Abbott also led land conservation efforts in the areas of northern Virginia.
He helped conserve Huntley Meadows Park and Dyke Marsh. He also fought against the spreading of the hydrilla plant in Potomac watershed. As a writer on the subject of birds, he wrote a weekly column on birds for The Washington Star and published works about the birds of Fort Belvoir, bird attraction and the birds of Trinidad and Tobago.
Abbott learned to draw from his father.
In 1951 he began publishing his artwork. That same year, he also came in second, for his painting of the pale-bellied brant goose.
He is the only person to ever place first and second in the duck stamp contest. The common eider stamp was released on July 1, 1957, sold for $2 and sold over 2.35 million copies.
In total, he created over 1,500 works in his lifetime.
He died on May 3, 1988, of cancer in Fairfax, Virginia. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1989, the United States Army Corps of Engineers founded and named the Jackson Miles Abbott Wetland Refuge at Fort Belvoir after him.
The refuge is a 150-acre tract.
His archives reside in the Smithsonian Institution Archives.
