Access to Boyce Hill Saylor Woods is restricted to those who have permission to enter the property. Please text Janet Saylor (914-318=7231) to walk the trails and let her know that you will be on their road.

The adjacent Boyce Hill Town Forest is 90+ acres of public land, most of which is a hillside meadow with wonderful views (1500-1800 foot elevation) and includes a pond. It is called a "Town Forest" but it has been mowed in the fall and just left all summer since it was a hill farm.

Janet Saylor writes about the property: My mother and I own an adjacent 90+ acres, which I called Boyce Hill Saylor Woods. Our parcel partially wraps around the town parcel (1300-1600 foot elevation), but is a very different habitat and almost entirely forested including old-growth hardwood, a long section of Hemlock along a stream, and other mature mixed forests. 
 
I was introduced to birding on a walk with the Mad Birders on Boyce Hill Town Forest. After I started using Merlin Bird ID, I would regularly loop through the forest on our land and then exit onto Boyce Hill Town Forest, listening and recording what I heard as I went. When I started using eBird, I first added all the birds that I heard to the Boyce Hill Town Forest hotspot but then thought that that could really confuse someone. There were so many birds that I heard in our forests that I rarely if ever heard in the meadow and vice versa. That's when I went back and sorted my observations into two different areas. I called it "Boyce Hill Saylor Woods (restricted access)" because I saw Pratt Refuge (restricted access) just on the other side of the ridge. I put in "Saylor" to distinguish this parcel from those of the other large landowners of woods on Boyce Hill.
 
I requested that our land become a hotspot and not just a personal spot because I thought that it might be a real resource to have other birders observe the species of birds in such different habitats in such close proximity. The town of Fayston has been engaging the public for the last year for input on the management plan for the town parcel. There is quite some controversy about how much of the meadow should be mowed and how much allowed to grow back up to the forest. Many residents of Fayston have long memories of looking out over the surrounding mountains from the field and are deeply attached to the open space, but some consider the mowing that that would take to be invasive. I would like as many birders as possible to walk the Town Forest and our land, or do the loop from our land to the town forest or vice versa and experience the birds in the meadow and forest and the boundaries between them on the same day and at the same elevation and document the birds in both. These observations could be useful as the town weighs its options, it could also be useful just for bird conservation in general. However, distinguishing the forest from the meadow and informing this discussion requires two hotspots.
 
Our land is a desirable destination for birding in its own right. My mother and I have a 0.75-mile "road to nowhere" that switch-backs up the hill through the forest with small saplings on each side to a small meadow. We are both open to having birders walk up this road anytime, and when I offered this to local birders, I found that many already had. It is definitely a "hotspot" for warblers, and I would like the species that other birders have seen/heard combined with my own observations. There are also side trails that loop deep through the forest and allow observation of the birds in and under the canopy. However, many of those trails eventually lead to our neighbor's lands, that's why I included the "restricted access". We would like people to contact us first before wandering onto the side trails. However, I have offered that a group bird walk on our trail network could be on the Mad Birder's schedule.