Largo Central Nature Preserve

Birding / Hiking / Adventuring Roadtrip Info

ROUGH DRAFT

Andrew Thoreson
Feb 2018

What's It Like
Kind of Birds
Wildlife
Ammenities
Time Needs
Directions
Experience

Typical view [?]

Photo Galleries

Typical View (22)

Snapshots! (16)

GRADES: Click each for info, = Note*
How Big	Not Rated
Importance	Not Rated
Revisit?	A
Birding	C *
Wildlife	B
Summer Heat	B *
Terrain	A
Fun Hike	B
Maintained	B
Mosquitos	C
Biting Files	A
Ticks	C *

NOTE: C+ and always something

NOTE: Parts exposed, parts not

NOTE: The bunnies have them but you're unlikely to walk in the grass here to get them

LOCATION: Accuracy: Read me

On Big Map: Click map (or on google maps). Address: 150 S Highland Ave SE, FL, Pinellas, USA, 33770

5 CLOSEST (Map)

Miles	Location
1.2	Eagle Lake Park
2.1	John S. Taylor Park
3	Florida Botanical Gardens
3.2	Heritage Village
4	Walsingham Park

OFFICIAL INFO:

County

A heck of an interesting park. Mostly paved trails. Main draws are tons of rabbits, boardwalk around pond, trail along 2 canals full of wading birds and gallinules. A down side is that there's a golf course around one side.

2) Kinds of Birds

Mostly wading birds and gallinules but you can be surprised by other things. You can usually hear parrots at the power station nearby or flying over but I've never seen where in there they land. We've seen 3 kinds of woodpecker on one pole here before. You tend to see the birds closer then you might expect normally.

3) Wildlife

Lots of rabbits - especially near dusk. They sometimes just line the trails. They have all kinds of signs for otters - and they could easily be here - but we've yet to see them. They may have moved on.

4) Amenities

Bathrooms and paved trails, observation platform, boardwalks.

5) Directions

There's a Largo Central Park that's for human activities - that's at the corner of US19 and W Bay Dr. This - Large Central Park Nature Preserve - it's to the east and off the main road a bit. If you're driving around a crowded jogger's park you went to the wrong place.

6) Time Requirements

I'm looking at one GPS track where we walked around the pond and more or less the periphery of the whole place and it took us an hour. There are loops inside that loop - if we did all that as well maybe add 30 minutes. That said - the main show is to walk to the observation tower and that takes about 20 minutes. Or the pond is probably just 15.

Experience

When you arrive there is a statue of otters by the bathrooms - otters must have been something big here at one time or we just have bad luck (specifically to otters only). If you go left (east) on the trails you'll come to the pond. there's some drainage thing going on here so there's some noise but often we'll see birds in the trees or water plants close to the boardwalk.

If you go north along several points on this east west trail you can enter into forest. It's pretty but we usually don't. If you go to the far left/east side you'll end up walking along the golf course. There are birds in the canal bordering the two however.

If instead of left/east you go to the right the trail will pretty quickly go north along a canal. Here is where we often see a lot of birds. The woodpeckers were here and the tons of bunnies waiting by the edge of the vegetation as if there to sell you something from booths along the way. Sometimes there are none however. The trail turns to the left. Here there's a lake going forward and another canal going left/ahead to the golf course. I think this is where the otters were (maybe are still) because the signs and the observation deck. There are pretty much always gallinules and wading birds here.

So it's always a nice stop really.

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