Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
The destinations we consider the best places for birding in Florida. Whenever we’ve visited these, we’ve always seen multiple species and had opportunities for great bird photos.
At the edge of Boynton Beach, where historic farmlands have given way to subdivisions, Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge is a 145,000 acre buffer between suburbia and the Everglades
Protecting nearly three quarters of the million-acre Big Cypress Swamp, Big Cypress National Preserve is Florida’s second largest and most remote wilderness.
Explore a sweep of coastal forest and wetlands along one of Florida’s largest lagoons, with panoramas that stretch to Perdido Key and the Gulf of Mexico.
Within sight of the massive Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, this ride to the Indian River Lagoon offers some of the best birding you’ll do by bike.
Winding along a narrow dirt road, Black Point Wildlife Drive offers from-your-car birding in the marshes and mud flats of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge
Using Orlando Wetlands Park to access the northeast corner of Bronson State Forest, this 7.5-mile loop burrows deeply into ancient forests in the St. Johns River floodplain.
Canaveral National Seashore protects 58,000 acres of maritime hammocks, dunes, and coastline surrounding Cape Canaveral, a natural sandy cape that formed where ocean currents meet.
T. Mabry Carlton Reserve is less than a dozen miles from downtown Venice but wild enough that the Florida panther roams these woodlands along the Myakka River floodplain.
Threading through a wilderness floodplain where the Little Wekiva and Wekiva Rivers meet, this 3.4 mile round-trip hike hidden in a subdivision offers excellent birding near Orlando.
Protecting a marshy peninsula on the eastern shore of Lake Tohopekaliga, this remote preserve provides a panorama of natural wetlands from its boardwalk.
For fabulous birding and more alligators than you can count, roam the marshy edge of Lake Hancock on miles of causeways through Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland
Weaving beneath a canopy knit by old-growth cypress trees in a majestic swamp forest, the boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is one of Florida’s best hikes
