Quick answer
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is a 9,155-acre National Park Service refuge in Queens and Brooklyn that forms the only wildlife refuge in the national park system managed for birds. Ospreys nest here, hundreds of bird species pass through, and it sits almost beside the runways of JFK airport.
Full transcript
Birds under the flight path
New York City owns a piece of the Atlantic Flyway, and it has set it aside where the planes come in. Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is about 9,155 acres of open water, salt marsh and two freshwater ponds wedged between Queens and Brooklyn — and it sits almost in the shadow of JFK airport, whose runways extend over what was once wetlands. It is the only wildlife refuge the National Park Service administers anywhere in the country, a quiet counterweight to all that asphalt.
A stop for half the continent's birds
Migrating birds work the bay's mud and marsh in huge numbers. It consistently ranks among the very top of America's national parks for bird species, and about 365 species have been documented here — more than Yellowstone or Yosemite. Ospreys, once devastated by the pesticide DDT, have nested here every year since 1991. Diamondback terrapins drag themselves ashore to lay eggs, and horseshoe crabs mate in the shallows. In May and September the hook is unbeatable.
Walk the ponds
The two easy loops circle the East and West Ponds from a small visitor center with parking and free permits. Hurricane Sandy breached the West Pond trail in 2012; after years of restoration the loop reopened in November 2021, good news for the easiest birding walk in the city. Come early, bring binoculars, and let the planes pass over you while the herons fish below — under a single sky that somehow holds them all.