Onward | A Room With a View

Courtesy of Pasco Audubon, once a month, we can become one with nature.

November 1, 2026

By Michele Miller
What’s What New Port Richey

The sky’s the limit – or maybe it’s your aging eyesight, or the trees that offer camouflage to the female cardinal, catbird, and Carolina wrens you can hear but not see in the bouncing branches above.

Such is the lament of this casual birdwatcher who came equipped for a Saturday morning birding hike with Pasco Audubon with a notebook and a camera with a less-than-powerful telephoto lens.

This October outing would be less about seeing and more about listening, I figured early on. To the birds above and the easy conversation exchanged with others who like me, simply appreciated being outdoors for a couple of hours trekking through the Florida Wilderness.

I am typically a lazy bird watcher, content to watch from my back porch or office window, where just a few moments ago, a hummingbird was sipping nectar from the orange pagoda plant, a tufted titmouse alit on the azalea bush just outside my window, and three red-breasted housefinches were noisily cavorting in the backyard bird bath to the consternation of the cardinals that seem to think they rule the roost and the bird feeder.

Our yard is filled with native and flowering plants that, along with the bird feeder, attract a fair share of regulars as well as occasional migrants stopping over to travel further south for the winter, north for the summer. There’s also a predatory and quite majestic-looking red-shouldered hawk who lands on the tall Florida oak from time to time to hunt until the black crows furiously chase it out.

Fish in a barrel, so to speak, for the hawk and the lazy birdwatcher.

But there is something about taking a walk in the woods.

A warm blanket of serenity unfolds and spreads with each step taken over crunching pine needles, sandy soil, and the damp wetlands hugging the hiking trail. Escapism.

About 20 or so fellow birdwatchers of various experience ventured out on the first Saturday of October. We left en masse from the Education Center at Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park, an 8,300-acre swath of Florida hammock and wetlands in New Port Richey that is overseen by the Southwest Florida Water Management District and Pasco County Parks and Recreation.

This is a well-used and well-loved park that fills up the parking lots regularly. Amenities include a playground, camping area, open spaces, hiking, biking, and equestrian trails, as well as the Birding Trail designated by the Audubon Society, where some 177 species of birds have been counted, some viewed from the bird blind built and maintained by Pasco Audubon volunteers such as Joe Colontonio, who also serves as a tour guide for walking and biking birding treks.

It’s a room with a view.

Identifying birds in the wild is more often than not a patient task – more or less a crapshoot – as you never know what you might see – or not on any given day.

“You have to be prepared for good days and bad days, said tour guide and Pasco Audubon president Christine Rowland, noting that just a few days earlier a member reported seeing some 50 warblers in his backyard and whistling ducks were aplenty just a few days ago.

No matter.

There’s a flurry of excitement when someone in the group spots a wading white ibis among the Cypress knees in the Florida marshland, and another catches sight of three deer out to graze, keeping a wary eye, but seeming unbothered by all the fuss. And there’s plenty of fauna and flora much closer to the ground to take photographs of.

Come Saturday morning, we’re one with nature. Feel free to join.

Now onward.

If You Go

Pasco Audubon hosts birding hikes on the first Saturday of the month in Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park in New Port Richey. Hikes are typically followed by a presentation in the Education Center. The group also hosts guided biking hikes in various parks as well as field trips to wildlife areas and annual trips to places such as Costa Rica. For information, including a monthly schedule of activities, visit pascoaudubon.com and/or check out the What’s What New Port Richey Outdoor Calendar below

Stepping Out Into the Great Outdoors | November 2026