Ten Western New York parks have been added to the state list of birdwatching locations, the Department of Environmental Conservation announced last week.
The newly designated birding locations – Amherst Veterans Canal Park, Chautauqua County’s Audubon Community Nature Center, and eight parks in the City of Buffalo, including Delaware and Cazenovia parks – join the list of 334 other birdwatching spots from across New York on the State Birding Trail.
Local birdwatchers have flocked to the 10 “new” sites for years, lifelong birdwatcher Mike Morgante told The Buffalo News on Saturday. But their official designation by the DEC makes it easier for beginners and visiting birdwatchers to find birding spots and see some of the region’s 300 avian species – and maybe if you’re lucky even a roseate spoonbill from Florida has been hanging out in recent weeks at Cazenovia and Seneca Bluffs parks, as well as Tifft Nature Preserve.
“Depending on where you are and what the habitats are, your birds are going to be different,” Morgante said. “If you move around to different places, different habitats – even around the country, around the world – the birds are different. It’s not all the same everywhere you go.”
The DEC’s latest round of additions – which also included a nature center near Syracuse and a bird sanctuary on Long Island – was notable for the inclusion of multiple parks along the Niagara River, including Unity Island, Broderick Park and Bird Island Pier. Those sites are some of the best places to go birding in Western New York, according to David Suggs, president of the Buffalo Ornithological Society.
“Fall through winter, it’s an exceptional attraction to wintering waterbirds,” Suggs said. “There are always surprises: Just massive populations of birds that gather on the river, coupled with the spectacular scenery of the river.”
The locations along the “Birding Trail” aren’t physically…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply