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Florida birding trail: Website helps you find places to explore & see wildlife

Site helps us discover burrowing owls in Brian Piccolo Park

Every place I love in Florida has this feature in common: Birds love it too.

That’s why I found the website for the Florida Great Birding and Wildlife Trail such a useful tool.

The Florida birding trail isn’t really a trail. It’s a listing of more than 510 great places to see birds and wildlife. Texas was the first state to create a birding trail and now more than half the states have birding trails. Few, however, can boast the wonderful birdlife Florida offers.

The Audubon Society says 516 species have been recorded in the state, including more than 100 species who stop in Florida on their migration journey.

Burrowing owls at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City.
Burrowing owls at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City. (Photos: Bonnie Gross)

What’s great about the Florida birding trail is its Trip Planner, which helps you choose a region and even narrow it down by whether it offers camping, restrooms or handicap accessibility.

You can also search by bird, too. So if you’ve always wanted to see a Masked Booby, you will learn the only place to go is Dry Tortugas National Park. (An outstanding adventure I highly recommend, with or without seeing a booby.)

Florida birding trail: Burrowing owls at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City.
Florida birding trail: Burrowing owls at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City. (Photo: Bonnie Gross)

Using the Florida birding trail website is a great way to discover small unsung wild places, as my story suggests.

My goal in trying out the Florida birding trail website was simpler: What cool places in my neighborhood have I missed?

I’ve lived in Fort Lauderdale for 30-plus years, so I didn’t expect to find anyplace I hadn’t visited before.

But I did.

I learned from the birding trail website that one of the best places in the state to see burrowing owls is an ordinary city park with soccer fields and tennis courts in Cooper City.

The birding trail website says this:

At first glance, this is an unlikely birding spot, with its assortment of baseball, football, soccer and cricket fields. Look a little closer though, and you’ll notice posts with flagging tape roping off holes in the middle of fields. Believe it or not, this is one of the best sites to easily see Florida Burrowing Owls in the state. The owl population here is doing quite well, and they’re the pride and joy of park staff, who accommodate the birds’ sometimes inconvenient choices of burrow locations. Respect their space, and you’ll get excellent views. They even hunt on game nights, when insects are attracted to the ball fields’ lights!

My mid-afternoon visit proved the birding-trail guide was absolutely correct.

We were not 150 feet inside the park before we saw our first burrow with two owls. They had picked the most public and inconvenient spot to burrow – between the sidewalk and the street in the swale, where bicyclists and cars frequently pass.

Florida birding trail: Burrowing owls at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City.
Florida birding trail: Photographers are drawn to the burrowing owls at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City. (Photo: David Blasco)

As we drove and walked through the small park, we saw more than a dozen cordoned-off burrows, and about a third had owls perched at the openings, swiveling their necks left, right, up and down with keen wariness.

They seemed unbothered by the passersby and paid no mind to the long-lensed photographers who positioned themselves the recommended 10 feet away.

The busy park was filled with food trucks gearing up for a special event. The tennis courts were full. Bicyclists and joggers were making use of the paved paths. And yet the burrowing owls went about their business.

Ten minutes away, we found a wilder, more scenic location also listed in the Florida Great Birding and Wildlife Trail — Tree Tops Park and Pine Island Ridge. We had visited this park many times, and recommend it for a walk under some of the most beautiful live oak trees you can find in overbuilt Broward County. We didn’t spot many birds (truth be told, I’m not much of a birder. I just love wild spots). But it’s probably the best place for a 2- or 3-mile-long hike in Broward County.

The website works quite well, but there are plans to add content, such as offering a printable PDF for every  trail site and Birding 101 videos.

On the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail:Tree Tops Park and Pine Island Ridge. (Photo: David Blasco)
On the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail:Tree Tops Park and Pine Island Ridge. (Photo: David Blasco)

Brian Piccolo Park
9501 Sheridan St.
Cooper City, FL 33024
(954) 357-5150

Tree Tops Park
3900 SW 100th Ave.
Davie, FL 33328
(954) 357-5130

Resources:


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Pat

Wednesday 5th of June 2019

Hi, are you aware that a burrowing owl colony in the City of Margate (Broward County) is in serious jeopardy of being displaced by misguided developers who want to turn some of Margate’s remaining green spaces into high density housing? The Margate Executive Golf Course On Margate Boulevard contains two nests, one with six chicks and the other with three. The course is under a Memorandum of Agreement with Lennar, and the seller and prospective developer are working aggressively to speed City approval for zoning change that will obliterate this habitat. An organization, Keep Margate Green!, has activated substantial citizen interest in opposition. If you would like to make contact with the secretary of that organization, her name is Marilyn Kneeland, a resident whose home is within eyesight of the two colonies, telephone 954 917 5619.

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