Forget the rental car or Metro-North trip, all you need to go hiking is a MetroCard. Home to over 30,000 acres of parkland, New York City offers hundreds of nature trails to explore in parks across the five boroughs. New Yorkers do not have to travel very far to connect with the great outdoors, from the Staten Island Greenbelt, which is three times the size of Central Park, to ecologically diverse forests in Van Cortlandt Park, to the salt marshes of Marine Park Preserve. Ahead, discover some of the best trails to take a hike in every borough. Photo of Concrete Park by TheTurducken on Flickr
With hundreds of parks and over 500 miles of waterfront, New York City is an excellent place for bird watching. The five boroughs serve as a temporary and permanent home to over 400 species of bird, thanks to both habitat diversity and location on the Atlantic Flyway, the route birds follow during migrations. From Pelham Bay Park in the northeast Bronx down to Great Kills Park on the South Shore of Staten Island, there is no shortage of birding activities in New York. With spring migration underway, we’ve rounded up the best places to find feathered friends throughout the city, most of which are accessible via public transportation. For guided bird watching tours and walks, check out events from NYC Parks, NYC Audubon, and the Linnaean Society of New York.
With a little less than two months until the Vernal Equinox, when clocks spring ahead to give us an extra hour of daylight, this winter’s combination of less light and warmth and the social isolation required of us by the pandemic will test New Yorkers’ spiritual and emotional health. The coronavirus will be with us until the summer at the earliest, and worry and even despair seem inevitable. In normal winters, we socialize inside, head to cozy restaurants or escape to warmer climates and hope for an early spring. Alas, none of these options are good ones during the pandemic.