Hidden Treasures

Great Florida Birding Trail

By Don Stap

The 35-minute drive from my home in central Florida to Lyonia Preserve, a site on the recently established Great Florida Birding Trail, was 35 minutes too long. As I passed glass-walled office buildings, gated housing communities, and a huge new mall, I wondered: Why create a formal trail to link birding areas that, for the most part, are already open to birders? Moments after I entered the 400-acre preserve, my skepticism dissolved.

Nestled between an interstate highway and the housing developments and strip malls of Deltona, Florida, Lyonia Preserve seems to exist almost outside of time. It is, in fact, a piece of the state's most ancient ecosystem: Florida scrub—a unique, desertlike, elfin forest of gnarled oaks, palmettos, and sand pines. It is also home to the bird I'd come to see, the Florida scrub jay. An endemic species—a beautiful mix of azure-blue and silver-gray—it is a prized find for out-of-state birders but also for residents like me. The first jay I encountered at Lyonia Preserve landed on my head. How could I have overlooked this place, so close to my home, for 16 years? I'd learned of its existence while browsing through the guide to the east section of the trail—exactly the kind of discovery the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had in mind when it began planning the trail five years ago.

The east section of the trail, open since November 2000, is a network of 135 sites spread throughout 18 counties. (The trail's western, Panhandle, and southern sections will open in years to come.) Identified by roadside signs bearing a swallow-tailed-kite emblem, the sites are grouped into clusters within an hour's drive of one another. Some sites are best suited to an all-day hike, others to a 15-minute stop; some provide an opportunity to see a particular species, such as the scrub jay; others, a diversity of species.

Traditionally, Florida's tourism industry has associated income from tourists with land development—theme parks, glitzy hotels, shopping malls. But a formal birding trail heightens awareness of the value of preserving land for wildlife. "Local businesses can get their piece of the economic pie without having to develop land," says Julie Brashears, coordinator of the trail. Birding-related activities account for annual retail sales of $477 million in Florida. Randall Sleister, land manager for Lyonia Preserve, has gotten calls from as far away as Washington State, from people who want to see scrub jays. "So I know there's benefit to the local economy," he says. The Conservation Commission has had requests for trail information from people in 50 states and 7 countries.

With more than 470 bird species in Florida—roseate spoonbills, wood storks, caracaras, sandhill cranes, swallow-tailed kites, Bachman's sparrows, frigatebirds, mangrove cuckoos, and more—birders won't exhaust the opportunities of the Great Florida Birding Trail anytime soon. One morning certainly wasn't enough for Lyonia Preserve. Halfway around a 3.6-mile loop trail, I stopped along a high, sandy ridge and looked out across the tops of oaks, pines, and palmettos. I could see where I had been and the trail that lay ahead, where two red-bellied woodpeckers were calling back and forth and more scrub jays surely were awaiting me.

Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail
by Patricia Sharpe

Georgia's Colonial Coast Birding Trail
by Doreen Cubie/photography by Kim Hubbard

Great Florida Birding Trail
by Don Stap

Great River Birding Trail
by Laura Erickson

Great Washington Birding Trail
by Steve Mlodinow

Lake Champlain Birding Trail
by Ted Levin