A trip to Edwin B. Forsythe NWR looking for snowy owls.
This park is mainly for birding and photography. The Refuge sits in an active area on the Atlantic Flyway’s flight path, and migratory birds just loooove hanging out there.
I’d looked up the park ages ago and found only a few short trails listed so it was not even on our “to-hike” list as it was too far to drive for a mile hike.
Miles: 5.8 (Songbird loop plus Grassland and the boardwalk part of Leeds Eco trail)
For detailed hike directions visit our main “Edwin B. Forsythe NWR” page.
But the park caught my attention again with the influx of a large number of snowy owls – a rare occurrence.
They’ve been seen in several areas of the state since December, but most reliably spotted at Forsythe.
We’d never seen a snowy owl in the wild and had been trying to find the time to head down there.
And now when I looked up the park there were more trails listed, so we wouldn’t be driving down just for a quick stroll.
There is a fee year-round but the park was not charging a fee the day we went (probably for the no-fee day on Martin Luther King Jr. Day – even though it was Sunday).
We wandered down the Grassland and Leeds Eco Trail boardwalk with it’s great view of the Atlantic City skyline, then walked down Gull Pond Rd. a bit and spotted some great blue herons.
A hawk landed on a branch at the edge of the trail so we got a nice pic. He just sat there seemingly non-plussed as people hovered around snapping photos. All of this and we’d only been in the park maybe 30 minutes!
The Songbird Trail uses Wildlife Drive to make it’s loop. Packed sand roads are not one of our favorite things to hike, but it’s needed to make loops here.
The Drive is one-way (not noted on the trail map but is on the Refuge map). We chose to walk the Drive portion first so we’d facing the slow-moving traffic most of the way.
At the parking area for Jen’s trail we turned into the woods and made our way back for easy, pleasant if uneventful hiking.
Once back at the lot, we hopped in the car to ride the 8-mile Wildlife Drive through the wetlands of the Refuge. This was really neat.
We pulled over by a bunch of parked cars and someone pointed out where two snowy owls were in the distance.
We could see them with our binoculars but they were out of range for our camera lens. (We use a 18-200mm as our hiking rig and I’d – of course – forgotten to grab the 300mm. Not sure if that would have done it either).
The owls sat there, quickly turning the heads to look around. Driving further around, we spotted another hawk (or maybe the one from earlier.)
Overall, if you are into birding then probably have already been here. But even if your focus is on hiking, this is still a cool place to check out.