The Audubon Center in Greenwich opened in 1942 as the National Audubon Society’s first environmental education center in the United States on land donated by Eleanor Clovis Reese and H. Hall Clovis. The 295-acre sanctuary has approximately seven miles of trails that lead to a hardwood forest, old fields, lake, streams and vernal ponds. Reminders of the past are the stone walks, an old apple orchard and original New England homestead buildings.

Ecosystems at the sanctuary include large open fields, successional thickets, young and mature forests of mixed oak, beech, and maple, Mead Lake, shrub swamps, several vernal pools, Indian Spring Pond (human-made and present throughout the year), red maple swamps, and a small grove of hemlock trees. Also at the sanctuary are a beautiful old apple orchard, honeybee hives, wildflower meadows, a butterfly garden, and bird feeding station.

The east branch of the Byram River crosses the property and was dammed in the nineteenth century to create shallow Mead Lake, home to frogs, water snakes and turtles. You will find a boardwalk and two bird blinds on the Lake Loop Trail. Noteworthy wildlife at the Center includes river otter, muskrats, wood ducks, white-tailed deer, coyotes, flying squirrels, nesting bluebirds, wild turkeys, bats, and a wide spectrum of reptiles, amphibians and birds.