Bird Key is a small uninhabited island within the city of

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

, Florida. It is located in

Biscayne Bay Biscayne Bay is a lagoon with characteristics of an estuary located on the Atlantic coast of South Florida. The northern end of the lagoon is surrounded by the densely developed heart of the Miami metropolitan area while the southern end is large ...

, just east of the

Upper Eastside The Upper Eastside (alternatively called East Side and commonly referred to as Northeast Miami) is a neighborhood in Miami, Florida. It is north of Edgewater, east of Little Haiti, south of the village of Miami Shores, and sits on Biscayne Ba ...

neighborhood and south of the 79th Street Causeway. It is one of only two naturally formed islands in the upper bay, and is the only privately owned, uninhabited island.

Overview

Visiting the island without the owner's consent is considered trespassing. Trespassers disturb the colony of diverse, native birds that use the island as a

rookery A rookery is a colony of breeding rooks, and more broadly a colony of several types of breeding animals, generally gregarious birds. Coming from the nesting habits of rooks, the term is used for corvids and the breeding grounds of colony-fo ...

. For decades, the island eluded writers and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

s, its history locked away in library microfiche and out-of-print books. But, in 2012, the Miami Herald published a feature on Bird Key recounting its storied past. At that time, Bird Key was awash in trash, which was later cleaned by employees o
Pelican Harbor Seabird Station
and a group of volunteers.

Concern

In April 2024, Bird Key's owner, Finlay Matheson, put the island on the market for $31.5 million, worrying environmentalists due to the fact that Bird Key is zoned residential by Miami-Dade County and could, potentially, be developed with local governmental approval. As of May 2024, various state and environmental groups were reportedly working together to buy the island and preserve it as a rookery. The details of those negotiations are not yet known.

References

Islands of Miami Islands of Florida Uninhabited islands of Miami-Dade County, Florida Private islands of Florida {{MiamiDadeCountyFL-geo-stub

Overview

Concern

See also

References