His professional career made William Belton a keen observer of the human world, but his amateur career made him an expert on the natural one. A foreign service officer and ornithologist, Belton, '35, died on October 25 from congestive heart failure. He was 95.
Belton studied political science at Stanford and then made his way to Ecuador, where he became a clerk in the American legation. In 1938, he was appointed vice consul at the American Consulate in Havana, Cuba. The consulate was overwhelmed with refugees from Nazi Germany—cases Belton described as "heart-wrenching."
His last post, in Brazil, saw him help to negotiate the release of Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick, who was kidnapped by guerillas in 1969. (The incident became the basis for the 1997 film Four Days in September.) His daughter, Barbara Yngvesson says, "For the last year he was there he was being followed by people with machine guns in jeeps."
Belton retired not long after. He began to spend more time birding, an interest piqued many years before in Ottawa, Canada, where his neighbor was Hoyes Lloyd, president of the American Ornithologists' Union. "It was like being interested in political science and finding out that you live next to the secretary of state," says his granddaughter, Lorien Belton, '00.
Although he had no formal ornithological education, Belton became a pioneer in the study of South American birdsong, focusing his efforts on the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. His exceptional eye for detail and a decade in the field culminated in 1984 and 1985 in a two-volume series, The Birds of Rio Grande do Sul, and a subsequent field guide. Greg Budney, a curator at Cornell University, where more than 1,000 of Belton's recordings reside, says, "Bill was a consummate citizen-scientist. He created a body of work that was well documented, well recorded, and made a huge contribution to our understanding of birds of South America. The value of those recordings is really eternal." Brazilian ornithologists he mentored and bird-watchers and conservationists inspired by his work call themselves the Beltinho generation.
His efforts on behalf of the natural world survive him in multiple conservation projects, including the American Bird Conservancy's William Belton Grants Program.
Belton was predeceased by his first wife, Julia Hyslop Belton, and a grandson. He is survived by his wife, Cornelia Brouwer Lett Belton; his children, Barbara Yngvesson, Hugh Belton and Timothy Belton, '72; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandson.
