The San Diego Bird Festival

The 12th San Diego Bird Festival, sponsored by the San Diego Audubon Society, is set to take place from 6 February through to 11 February 2008. The venue for this popular birding festival is the superb Marina Village Conference Center in Mission Bay, San Diego, California.

The six-day program for the San Diego Bird Festival includes many of the most popular events of past festivals, as well a several new trips and workshops. There are 48 events scheduled to take place throughout the festival. The “Local Favorites Trip” will take participants to Old Mission Dam and the Santee and Lindo Lakes – birding havens that are surrounded by busy suburbs. Bird watchers can expect to see an astounding variety and number of birds, including downy and Nuttall’s woodpeckers, wood and ring-necked ducks, western blue-bird and osprey, as well as vermillion and gray flycatchers.

The “Birds of the Anza-Borrego Desert” all-day trip starts at 5:30 to arrive at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park as the sun rises. This rugged desert environment is home to a wide variety of bird species including the great roadrunner, Costa’s hummingbird, cactus wren, phainopepla , black-tailed gnatcatcher and long-eared owl.

“Birds of the Laguna and Cuyamaca Mountains” is a trip into San Diego County’s mountains, which provide diverse environments of expanses of grasslands and chaparral as well as oak and conifer forests. Weather permitting, the group will stop off at a number of places and should be on the look out for ferruginous hawks, mountain chickadees, lark sparrows, Steller’s and western scrub-jays as well as hairy woodpecker.

Other excursions on the program include “San Diego’s Pacific Rocky Shores Trip”, “Whale Watching and Pelagic Birds off San Diego’s Coastline”, “Birding Along the Border”, “San Diego River Estuary Walk”, plus many more.

The dramatic increase of fires in Southern California over the past ten years has raised concerns among conservationists who fear that one of nature’s most diverse areas is heading for an ecological disaster. The unique “Chaparral, Wrentits and Fire Worshop and Trip” plans to give participants an in-depth look at the problems caused by fire and possible solutions to these problems.

Photographer and author, Kenn Kaufman, will be the keynote speaker at the San Diego Bird Festival banquet. As a world authority on birds and the author of a number of birding books and guides as well as being the field editor for Audubon magazine, Kenn Kaufman will be sharing some of his in-depth knowledge on bird-related subjects which includes his commitment to nature conservation.

Without a doubt, the San Diego Bird Festival is packed with opportunities to enjoy the natural beauty of birds and their habitats and is an event that no bird lover would want to miss.