Bunche Beach Preserve is located just off of Sanibel Island at the end of John Morris Road in Fort Myers, Florida. Bunche Beach Preserve is well known for its shore birds.
Ruddy Turnstone
Like many of the birding locations in Florida that are known for shore birds and wading birds, there are more birds present at low tide. If you can time low tide with the morning and evening hours, you can combine the best light with a larger population of birds.
Bunche Beach is a mile in each direction. I found that there were a larger number of shore birds to the right of the entrance.
Dunlin
Shore birds that I photographed at Bunche Beach Preserve were Wilson’s Plovers, Piping Plovers, Semipalmated Plovers, Willets, Dunlins, Killdeer, and Ruddy Turnstones. There were also diving Brown Pelicans and Ospreys for birds in flight photography.
You may want to bring along rubber boots for walking out in the sand and water of low tide to photograph the birds.
Juvenile Semipalmeted Plover
It's $2 per hour to park at the Bunche Beach Preserve. Parking is single file down the road. So on a busy weekend day, it can be a good walk to the preserve. You also need to pay for parking at a machine near the entrance and walk back to your car to put the receipt on your car dashboard.
Written by Martin Belan
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