The Great Florida Birding Trail

The Great Florida Birding Trail website is a Florida birder’s dream come true. When you visit the site, it will help you plan out birding trips across the state based on various criteria such as whether a location is handicapped accessible and even down to some specific birds you would like to find on your trip. Once you put in all of your information into the Trip Planning Tool, the site will help map out a birding trip for you in the state. The page offers a wonderful bird portfolio to help with identification as well as explaining where that particular bird can be found across Florida. Other resources include a detailed explanation of various birding habitats, volunteer opportunities as well as a link to their current and old Kite Tales Newsletter.

The Children and Nature Network

Learn and explore ways you can connect yourself, children and your family to nature and unplug yourself from your computer. This website offers an array of wonderful activities and national events to help get you and your family outside into nature. They offer a network of worldwide Family Nature Clubs that you and your family can join. For educators and nature centers or outdoor programs, there are very detailed links sharing training tools and guides to help train others on how to connect children to nature. They offer a Legacy Camp for people between the age of 18-29 to help train you to become a go-to advocate for your community. There is also an enormous research library following studies done on the need for people and children to unplug and get out into nature.

Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Program (EEL)

This is the main website for the Brevard County EEL program. This program was started to protect a number of amazing natural habitats in Brevard county. The program acquired

“environmentally sensitive lands for conservation, passive recreation, and environmental education”. The EEL program is incredibly important to Brevard county in that they are working hard to preserve, protect and maintain natural habitats in this county. This website shares their very powerful Vision and Mission Statement as well as listing all of their EEL areas in the county. There are a huge number of EEL sanctuaries around our beautiful county that you can visit or that offer special programs throughout the year. Their website is full of a whole host of information concerning the EEL program, environmental education, land management, as well as brochures about each of their areas.

American Birding Association

The ABA website is a go-to spot for the North American birding community. Their site offers birders and conservationists everything from state field guides to information about birding trails across the country. There is an enormous collection of publications that includes the ABA Birding magazine, the ABA Birder’s Guide to Travel as well as Big Day and List reports. For those birders that like to attend events and festivals, there is a link that allows you to see all of the various activities taking place across the country. This is also the place to read about the birding Code of Ethics, get the most current ABA checklist and get info about rare bird alerts.

Badbirdz Reloaded

This page will bring you to one of the two radar-migration tracking sites. From March to May and from August to October, daily posts are shared giving updates about warbler migration over Florida. The link is their website that teaches a birder how to read Doppler radar to monitor nocturnal bird migration. This site also shares information about the Wekiva Basin Banding Station. The Facebook page tends to be the most active with an array of shared daily posts and information during migration season allowing birders to track migrating warblers through radar images. You can find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Badbirdz.

Tips for Feeding Birds in Florida

This incredibly detailed page written by Tropical Audubon discusses bird feeding tips for South Florida but all of their tips apply to Brevard County as well. Check out their wonderful suggestions for methods on how to clean your feeders properly and how to make your own summer suet that is made with ingredients that won’t go rancid in our heat and humidity.

Garden for Wildlife - National Wildlife Federation

This website is one of the most thorough and detailed sites concerning how to make a sustainable, wildlife friendly yard. This site shares information on butterfly friendly gardening and how to help Monarch butterflies, how to use native plants in your yard to create a sustainable garden and how to get your yard certified as a Wildlife Habitat. If you are wanting to learn how to have a Florida friendly yard and draw in native birds and wildlife, this site will walk your through all the steps you need to take.

Creating a Bird and Florida Friendly Yard

This website used to teach you about Florida friendly landscaping, but it no longer exists. Below are several links for other resources to help create a bird and Florida friendly yard. The Florida Native Plant Society link offers a huge variety of information about the best placement of native plants throughout your yard to make a safe bird environment as well as types of plants that will bring in hummingbirds and other varieties of birds. There are many suggestions about how to reduce your need for fertilizers and pesticides by using Florida native plants.

A Problem for Pelicans

A Problem for Pelicans

Learn about the problem for pelicans (getting hooked or tabled on fishing gear) and how to rescue a bird if you accidentally hook one. Video produced by Dee Fairbanks-Simpson.