Top Ten Reasons to Visit Hyattsville

1. You’re willing to spend a little money on your trip, but you’re price-conscious. Hyattsville does not think of itself—yet—as a big tourist attraction. Which means it’s relatively unspoiled. Gas, lodging, parking and so on aren’t as cheap as they might be in your home town, but they’re cheaper than they would be in Bethesda or Alexandria. 

2. You’re a bird watcher. As such, you’ve probably heard of Prince Georges County as the site of breeding programs for whooping cranes. The cranes live just outside Hyattsville at the Patuxent Wildlife Reserve, where you can sign up to sponsor an individual bird, a couple, or a brood. You won’t interact directly with “your” crane or cranes: to allow the cranes to experience as normal a family life as possible, they’re kept in an area well separated from the tourist areas of the park. You’ll get photos, and watch whooping cranes in life-sized video movies. Visit their web page: www.pwrc.usgs.gov

However, a side bonus of dense human population, now that we’re beginning to recover from DDT poisoning, is a growing bird population. You can expect to find dozens of species, including some that are still transitioning from endangered to rare or from rare to locally-common, in almost any Maryland park. A state policy of designing most parks around bodies of polluted water may not sound appealing, but many insects, and insect-eating birds, find it attractive.