"What we did contemplate," Jackson recalled, "and it was really for the fans, was to have the hobbits walking through the Old Forest and to see a feathered cap come darting through the trees, to hear the sound of Tom Bombadil's voice and son and then have the hobbits turn and run away as fast as they could!(he laughed) We thought (that)would acknowledge Tom Bombadil in an affectionate-joke kind of way. We didn't have time to do it."

(from the Dec/Jan 2002 Volume 33 No. 6 issue of Cinefantastique in the article titled LOTR:FOTR Peter Jackson Being True to Tolkien: The New Zealand Director Honors a Literary Classic)