San Diego Bird Festival

When: March 1 - 4, 2012
Where: Marina Village Conference Center
Mission Bay
San Diego CA (map)
More info: Event website

From sea to desert to mountaintop, San Diego County has a lot of birding to offer, with more than 500 species. Our birding area encompasses diverse habitats ranging from desert to mountains, shore to coastal wetlands, urban and suburban. We’ll even take you birding by bicycle and kayak. The 2012 Bird Festival offers four pelagic trips, Thursday through Sunday, March 1 through 4. Swarovski Optik and SeaWorld San Diego are pelagic trip sponsors. Pelagic birding maestro Terry Hunefeld leads the trips and his co-leaders include Steve Howell, Paul Lehman, Guy McCaskie, and Todd McGrath.

The San Diego Audubon Society invites you to San Diego for the 16th annual San Diego Bird Festival, being held at the Marina Village Conference Center. Festival headquarters, overlooking a picturesque marina, is just steps away from San Diego’s species-rich San Diego River estuary. Nearby islands, Mexico’s Islas Los Coronados, complement the ocean view and offer the possibility of adding exotic pelagic bird species to festival-goers’ birding lists.

In addition to keynoter Kenn Kaufman, internationally acclaimed birder and photographer Richard Crossley, author of the new field book series The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds, and The Shorebird Guide, is a special festival guest. He will lead a combination workshop and walk on Beginning Shorebird ID, where he will share his secrets for successful bird identification and lead a walk to the San Diego River Estuary for field observation.

Additional festival events include a special day for families and children on Sunday, March 4. Kid-friendly activities include a Beginning Bird Art Workshop, the Raptor Rap Workshop, and a Bird Calling Workshop. All family events on Sunday are free with no pre-registration needed, although we do ask you to check in at the San Diego Audubon Society registration desk at festival headquarters upon arrival for handouts and important information and announcements about Family Free Day events.

Early-birders attending the 2012 San Diego Bird Festival might also wish to take advantage of a popular festival feature: pre-registration. Early-birders are invited to stop by festival headquarters on Wednesday, March 1, 4-8 pm in the Seaside Room in Marina Village to pre-register while enjoying free drinks and snacks.

A new festival field trip in 2012 is Birding Balboa Park. Spend the morning birding one of San Diego’s cultural and natural landmarks, Balboa Park. Tucked among the Spanish Renaissance buildings created for the 1915 Panama Exhibition are numerous gardens and hiking trails that are home to a variety of bird and butterfly species. After the morning’s birding and touring, we’ll get a behind-the-scenes peek at the San Diego Natural History Museum’s extensive avian collection and will see a demonstration of making a museum bird skin.