Charlotte

This 220-acre preserve offers trail loops through scrubby oak and pine flatwoods, with an open water marsh. Here you can find many of the species associated with the scrub and flatwood community: woodpeckers, resident warblers such as pine, palm, and yellow-rumped, and many gnatcatchers and towhees. The central wetland area offers wading birds, both pelicans, both teal, and a collection of other water-associated birds such as Red-winged Blackbird, Common Yellowthroat and Eastern Phoebe. Least Sandpipers have also been found at the wetland, and the northern loop trail is home to a family of Florida Scrub-Jays, so look closely!

Situated on a small protected peninsula that juts into Lemon Bay Aquatic Preserve, this site offers a green haven within the rapidly developing communities around Englewood. A trail system through flatwoods and coastal marsh will lead you past everything from white and glossy ibises to great horned owls and down to the bay, where you will find common loons and bay ducks in winter and a variety of herons and egrets all year long.

Adjacent to the much larger Babcock/Webb WMA, this site is also dominated by pine flatwoods and can offer a similar experience on a much smaller scale. Trails around the perimeter through the flatwoods offer sparrows and warblers, vireos and flycatchers.

Three loop trails offer almost 5 miles of possibilities, not including a longer spur trail into the buffer preserve itself. They will take you through very different habitat types: one through pine flatwoods that harbor Red-shouldered Hawks and Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, and the other around freshwater marsh and through remnant tropical hammock where you will see wrens and vireos. You may hear or actually catch sight of an Eastern Screech-Owl.

In addition to two isolated wetlands, this site offers pine flatwoods mixed with oak/cabbage palm hammocks in an interesting example of habitat succession from agricultural fields to wild lands. A 1.75-mile loop trail gives you the chance to find White-eyed Vireos, screech-owls and Great Horned Owls, and Red-shouldered Hawks in the uplands.

Don’t let the Minor League quality sports park fool you; this 380-acre preserve offers a variety of habitats including flatwoods, scrub, mangroves and tidal creeks, all surrounding a large central lake. Trail systems starting behind the ballfields lead you around the lake (look for Mottled Ducks, Common Gallinules and the occasional King Rail), then into well-maintained scrub and flatwoods where pine and prairie warblers are neighbors to an established family of Florida Scrub-Jays.