Audubon Center
The Audubon Center in Greenwich opened in 1942 as the National Audubon Society’s first environmental education center in the United States on land donated by Eleanor Clovis Reese and H. Hall Clovis. The 295-acre sanctuary has approximately seven miles of trails that lead to a hardwood forest, old fields, lake, streams and vernal ponds. Reminders of the past are the stone walks, an old apple orchard and original New England homestead buildings.
Audubon Greenwich’s main sanctuary is the site located at 613 Riversville Road, which is comprised of 285 acres, with 7 miles of walking trails. There you will find the Kimberlin Nature Education Center building with exhibits, staff offices and classrooms.
The Center contains the Hilfiger Children’s Learning Center with hands-on nature activities and interpretive natural history exhibits, the Kiernan Hall Nature Art Gallery, a Wildlife Viewing Window and honey bee hive exhibit, a Nature Gift Store: books, binoculars, birdfeeders, gifts. The Kimberlin Center is also available for event rentals and children’s parties. Audubon Greenwich is comprised of 11 other sanctuaries totaling 686 acres of woodlands, meadows, and wetlands, and 15 additional miles of hiking trails.
Ecosystems at the sanctuary include large open fields, successional thickets, young and mature forests of mixed oak, beech, and maple, Mead Lake, shrub swamps, several vernal pools, Indian Spring Pond (human-made and present throughout the year), red maple swamps, and a small grove of hemlock trees. Also at the sanctuary are a beautiful old apple orchard, honeybee hives, wildflower meadows, a butterfly garden, and bird feeding station.
The east branch of the Byram River crosses the property and was dammed in the nineteenth century to create shallow Mead Lake, home to frogs, water snakes and turtles. You will find a boardwalk and two bird blinds on the Lake Loop Trail. Noteworthy wildlife at the Center includes river otter, muskrats, wood ducks, white-tailed deer, coyotes, flying squirrels, nesting bluebirds, wild turkeys, bats, and a wide spectrum of reptiles, amphibians and birds.
The Center serves as the site for the Quaker Ridge Hawk Watch and is one of the best locations in the Northeast United States to view the fall migration of raptors. The all time record of 30,000+ broad-winged hawks counted in one day has not been matched in the region, even at Hawk Mountain, PA. Golden and Bald Eagles, Common Ravens and Black Vultures have also been spotted. Classroom and field workshops are offered to develop identification skills. A Hawk Watch Weekend Festival is held each September.
Seasonal highlights include the late winter movement of spotted salamanders to their breeding pond, spring warbler migration, late summer meadow insects and the nocturnal fall migration of the saw-whet owl.