Hard-core birders know almost every good place, of course, but for those who don't, here are four Greater Boston reservations that are easy to get to, pleasant to walk in, and, best of all, fairly likely to produce encounters with birds less common than the pigeon, robin, or starling.
Mattapan Urban Boston and Cambridge have their favorite bird-watching sites. Belle Isle Marsh in East Boston is one, Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge is another. Unusual birds are always being reported in the city -- kestrels and red-tailed hawks on Beacon Hill, owls on Commonweath Avenue Mall. We visited a relatively new urban site, the Boston Nature Center and Wildlife Sanctuary in Mattapan.
Driving west on Morton Street, crossing Blue Hill Avenue, you wouldn't imagine there's a nature preserve nearby, owned since 1996 by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. But just past Harvard Street, turn left into what used to be the Boston State Hospital, and follow the signs. Some of the old buildings remain, but follow the road and you come to the new George Robert White Environmental Conservation Center, which serves as visitors center and program office.
The 67-acre preserve has many child-friendly programs, including a summer day camp, with fees on a sliding scale. The grounds include woods, wetlands, meadows, a little pond, the Canterbury Brook, and 2 miles of winding trails covered with bark mulch. On the back side, along American Legion Highway, are the Clark-Cooper Community Gardens, full of freshly seeded plots and busy gardeners the day we were there.
The visitors center, built in 2002, is a showplace of ''green" building design, with photovoltaic shingles to generate electricity and heat pumps that draw warm water from 1,000 feet underground. It was a cleanup day, and as we set out on the trail, troops of volunteers worked busily on the ongoing effort to remove trash and small-scale junk.
