There are roughly 1,000 native bird species in the 50 States, and if you stand long enough on the walkways of Boston’s Belle Isle Marsh Reservation, you could see around one-fourth of them.

This protected Mid-Atlantic salt marsh remnant has recorded an astonishing 271 species of birds. It offers Bostonians a cool, breezy refuge of salty air and bird calls not far from Logan International Airport.

It’s the only remaining salt marsh in city, which was once surrounded by them. It protects neighborhoods from coastal erosion, absorbs storm surges, and delights the community who campaigned to protect it in the 1980s in the early days of the environmentalism movement.

“You can be out there on the main street then you come in here and you’re in a different place in a different time,” Heather Famico of the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) told CBS News Boston.

The 359-acre marsh is nestled between the urbanized cities of Boston and Revere where it serves as a much-needed respite for migrating birds and as a habitat for many species including some on the Endangered Species List, while providing a beautiful and rare open green space to relax in.

That description was made by the Friends of Belle Isle, a grassroots advocacy group that formed in the 1980s when salt marshes, then a more common feature of the greater Boston landscape, were disappearing.

Belle Isle was looked at for development, but the organization prevented that from happening.

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Longtime readers will know that GNN breaks for birders, and here one has a chance of spotting threatened and endangered birds like the least bittern, short-eared owl, and king rail. Other species like the saltmarsh sparrow, Virginia rail, and American oystercatcher, are all considered to have special conservation interest.

“It’s a cool oasis in a hot city. We need this,” said Kannan Thiruvengadam from the Friends of Belle Isle. “We need to be out here, enjoying, appreciating, advocating and learning what it is that we need so we can then protect it.”

WATCH the story below from CBS Boston…

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