Peaks View Park is the stereotypical city park with extensive athletic fields, wooded trails, and a frisbee golf course. The only difference between this and your standard city park is that this park, Lynchburg’s second largest, is absolutely massive and seemingly unending!
In winter, I recommend hitting the frisbee golf course. The course navigates a juniper forest that provides food and shelter for mixed sparrow flocks, sapsuckers, and thrushes. Massive flocks of waxwings will congregate in the mixed juniper and dogwood forest surrounding the frisbee golf course.
In spring the best places to bird are the creekside and wooded trails. Migrant warblers, tanagers, orioles, and other songbirds are pretty common here.
As with most places, summer birding here can be pretty boring. Peaks View Park may seem like yet another location where birders cannot escape the monotonous singing of Red-eyed Vireos and Indigo Buntings but there are a few over summering species that may be worth the stop for passing listers. The park boasts a good list of breeding flycatchers and is bountiful with Orchard Orioles.
Fall is where things get interesting. The park is chock full of berrying plants that fruit from August through November. Mixed foraging flocks can be easily viewed in many of the juniper, black gum, and dogwood trees that surround the frisbee golf course. It’s at this time of the year when Chipping Sparrows start to group up and its always worth a check of these flocks to see if a Savannah Sparrow has joined in.
Accessibility: The park has three entrances, located at Ardmore Drive, Tenbury Drive, and Ivy Creek Lane off of Wiggington Road. It also serves as an access point for the Ivy Creek Greenway, which is a paved, ADA compliant trail.
eBird Hotspot: Peaks View Park
Owner/Manager: City of Lynchburg
—Logan Anderson