She asked Leon Bezdikian, a local stained glass artist,

to craft a window depicting the American woodcock.

The bird theme was chosen to honor of the woodcock’s

role in preserving the Middle Patuxent Environmental

Area from development in the 1960s. To Mary, the fiesty

bird symbolizes the power of individuals to protect

nature, and the window would create more chances to

tell the bird’s inspiring story.

Bezdikian’s research led him to a vivid design of a

woodcock flying through a lush wooded landscape.

Native trillium and larkspur blooms remind viewers of

the bird’s spring flights, and grey river stones ground

the image beside Howard County’s own Middle Patuxent River.

Built in Bezdikian’s Howard County studio, the spectacular window was later custom framed by three members of the Howard County Woodworkers Guild: Robert Lewis, David McCann, and Leslie Rucker.  The frame was built of wood salvaged from the Robinsons’ barn, the same material that panels the walls in the Center’s Robinson Legacy Room.  The woodcrafter team installed the window in the Legacy Room not long before the Center’s official opening in September, 2011.

Thanks to the creative efforts of Mary O’Neill, Leon Bezdikian, and the Howard County Woodworkers Guild, the woodcock window is becoming a familiar image of nature’s beauty to all visitors of the Robinson Nature Center.