Eighty years after it was shut off to the world, New York has reopened a secret woodland sanctuary a stone’s throw from Fifth Avenue, just in time for summer

Eighty years after it was shut off to the world, New York has reopened a secret woodland sanctuary a stone’s throw from Fifth Avenue, just in time for summer

The 1.6-hectare Hallett Nature Sanctuary is one of three areas of woodland in Central Park, the huge expanse of nature in the Big Apple visited each year by an astonishing 43 million people

The little sanctuary is hidden away at the southeastern end of the park, just meters from bustling designer boutiques and luxury high-rise apartment blocks. For decades it was fenced off and allowed to overrun

"It was closed by the park commissioner Robert Moses in the ’30s and Robert Moses thought it would become a bird sanctuary," said Doug Blonsky, president and CEO of the Central Park Conservancy, a non-profit organization that raises 75 percent of the park’s annual budget

"Unfortunately what happens, particularly in an urban environment, if you leave an area closed for a long time, invasive species or plant material take over, forcing out the natives," he said

There are around 270 species of bird in Central Park. You can see many of them in the Hallett sanctuary, along with squirrels, racoons, ducks and birds pecking at puddles on the rocks. There is even a woodchuck which Blonsky says "is very unusual."

For now, the sanctuary is open only three afternoons a week from 2 pm to 5 pm. In July and August it will also be open for two hours on Sunday

But only 20 visitors will be allowed in at once to maintain the solitude and peace of the sanctuary