Anclote River Park

The gulf coast fades into different modes. From Sarasota to North St.Pete you have barrier islands with some nice beaches. Up here you start to run out and get just one-off islands like Honeymoon Island / Caladessi and up here Anclote key which you can't get to without a boat. SO - you have lot of folks who'd like a beach when what they have is mostly mangroves on the coast. So here they built one and it's pretty nice. Not many places can you sit under the cover of oak trees and enjoy looking at the beach. And not many beaches can you enjoy seeing some land in front of you. But that's about all this is is a beach - birding... maybe there are lots of birds stopping at the parking lot and we missed them.

If you click the map link you can see there are several stops around here. There's a reputation for this area to have a few odd birds like loons. We didn't have much success finding oddball birds but in general most sites had more birds than you'd think ought to be there. Warblers passing through - that kind of thing.

Some areas are a pleasure to drive through so you don't mind if you don't see birds, some are unpleasant and you only go because of birds. This general area of west pasco and hernando counties for me is definitely one of those that are just kind of an unpleasant trip and it takes a while to get out here. I think it's the abundance of billboards instead of local color - though people can be quite nice here.