Mead Garden is home to an amazing variety and number of birds. And many more species utilize the park during migration and throughout the year. The Garden is a popular spot among birders. Bring your binoculars on your next visit and see if you can spot our resident barred owl, Cooper’s hawk or our newest resident, the rare red-headed woodpecker. Along the creek and pond, you are likely to see wading and diving birds like the great blue heron, great egret, white ibis, anhinga — or even a green heron. Other commonly spotted birds include the cardinal, grackle, red-bellied woodpecker, blue jay, osprey and many more.

Before your visit, be sure to download the Mead Botanical Garden Birding Guide (compiled by members of the Orange Audubon Society) or pick one up at the information sign.

Check out our photo gallery of birds in Mead Garden*. And be sure to visit and like the Mead Garden Bird Sightings Facebook page, a page dedicated to birds sightings at Mead Garden where visitors are encouraged to post any species they see within the Garden at any time of the year. Thank you to Andrew Boyle for creating and maintaining this page.

And if you’re interested in woodpeckers (seven of Florida’s eight resident and migratory woodpecker species have been spotted in Mead Garden), be sure to check out “A Guide to Woodpecker Identification and Their Habitat,” an informative brochure created by Nancy Adler and Larry Martin for the Florida Master Naturalist Program. (Please note, this is a quad-fold brochure, so it prints on legal-sized paper.)

Watch our blog for updates on the latest bird activity.