The 10th annual North Shore Birding Festival is expanding this December with 70 trips across Central Florida, including 30 on the Lake Apopka North Shore.  

The festival will also focus on raising money for the Apopka Birding Park. 

Orange Audubon Society’s North Shore Birding Festival, which runs from Dec. 11 to Dec. 15, will feature five days of guided tours, keynote speakers and field trips on the 20,000-acre North Shore property and other Central Florida sites. 

This year’s North Shore Birding Festival is a week later because the Orange Audubon Society was able to secure the youth camp at Wekiwa Springs State Park as a base of operations.  

“There are the two bases of operations: the North Shore trailhead, McDonald Canal Boat Ramp area, that’s where we have our lunches, and then the Wekiwa Springs State Park youth camp, where we have our dinners and our keynote dinners,” said Deborah Green, Orange Audubon Society president and Birding Festival committee chair.. 

The St. Johns River Water Management District has been working to restore the North Shore, returning it to wetlands. Former muck farms, local sewage discharge from cities, and wastewater from citrus processing plants caused pollution of the North Shore. 

 The North Shore Birding Festival is an offshoot of the two-day Birdapalooza, a family-oriented event at Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive where the St. Johns River Water Management District bused people to the North Shore. 

Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive is an 11-mile, one-way drive through the wetlands that visitors can explore by car or bicycle. The drive is open from sunrise to sunset on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and on federal holidays. The entrance is on Lust Road in Apopka. 

“I have a cool picture that [shows] how amazed people were at what they were seeing out there,” Green said. “That helped create public pressure to open the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive to the public.” 

The 2015 public opening of Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive and the 2017 arrival of Hurricane Irma caused Birdapalooza to fade away. However, the North Shore Birding Festival emerged as a new event, tailored more for out-of-town birders and featuring expert-guided tours. 

Green said she recognized the need for a birding festival in the Apopka area after visiting 20 different ones across the nation. 

Local birders volunteer to run the North Shore Birding Festival, which draws in birders and photographers from 18 states and two Canadian provinces. Volunteers help keep costs low. Another way the festival reduces expenses is by running the event electronically. 

“The big festivals have to pay for their venue, for the expo hall and all that, and we just decided long ago that we wouldn’t do that,” Green said. “We just do it all electronically, send people directions to the to the sites to meet for the trips. And that has worked for us.” 

The festival recorded 193 species in 2023, with a total of 377 species sighted on the Lake Apopka North Shore.  

For more information about the event, including speakers, leaders, location, and lodging, as well as to register, visit NorthShoreBirdingFestival.com.  

Apopka Birding Park 

The Apopka Birding Park and its nature center, located at the entrance to the Wildlife Drive, will enhance the festival experience, Green said.  

The nearly 70-acre site was a nursery that the St. Johns River Water Management District bought as part of the Lake Apopka restoration. It was later surplused to the city of Apopka because it is an upland site, not essential for restoration, according to the Orange Audubon Society website.  

Current restoration efforts at the park, aided by grants, focus on removing weedy plants, planting native flora attractive to birds, creating trails, and establishing butterfly gardens. 

A former truck repair shop will be transformed into a 3,400-square-foot nature center at the park. The $2 million building will serve as a central gathering point for vendors and community activities.  

“[The Apopka Birding Park] will be a trip destination,” Green said. “Now we have one trip early in the morning at the birding park, but otherwise it’s not really ready. There’s so many other places that are in good condition ecologically [so] we are not bringing people to the birding park for trips in general.”