San Diego Bird Festival 2026

Our group at the Chollas Reservoir hike

This February, I attended my first San Diego Bird Festival. This was only the second bird festival I’ve attended after Wings Over Water 2025. Partially to reduce the cost, but also to contribute, I decided to be a festival volunteer. I started Wednesday evening with the opening keynote from Jason Hall through the Sunday night finale. Between volunteering, going on trips, and just hanging around the festival I had a busy 5 days. There’s no way to capture all the memories in one post, but this long post captures some of the highlights.

Keynotes

To kick off the conference, Jason Hall from InColorBirding of Philadelphia gave a talk about the impact birding can have on people and the community around us. He and another keynote speaker, Dexter Patterson, host The Bird Joy Podcast and his great communication skills were evident as he mixed education, inspiration, and humor throughout his talk. Birding is a $107 billion per year economy in the US and it is important to ensure that money is going to further both conservation and improving access to nature. His talk touched on fascinating new research about how birds use urban habitats during migration, showing how important urban conservation is to birds, especially on the west coast. Jason also shared some of his own birding story, demonstrating how important it is for the birding community to welcome and make space for those who don’t fit the older, white stereotype that is too often associated with birding.

The conference kickoff keynote with Jason

On Thursday, the keynote moved to the WorldBeat Cultural Center in Balboa Park, where Makeda Cheatom and Marilu Lopez-Fretts discussed multiple initiatives to bring birding to urban communities and work with those communities to improve their quality of life. Makeda Cheatom seems like a force to be reckoned with seeing how many initiatives she has operated and the connections she has built with organizations of all shapes and sizes. One event I will be watching is the Annual Juneteenth Harriet Tubman Bird Walk. I really appreciated Makeda’s passion for community engagement. In a space as demographically limited as birding, it was refreshing to see people challenging the narrative that urban children aren’t interested in birds.

The view as I entered Dexter’s talk

Dexter Patterson’s keynote took place at the San Diego Natural History Museum amphitheater. The room felt very official and was fitting for someone who teaches science communication. His talk shared a lot about his personal journey connecting with birding. He spoke passionately about both inspiring experiences like watching an osprey catching a fish and challenging ones like being the only black birder at an event that was not inclusive. From those experiences, Dexter has built a social media following and a community in Wisconsin that is diverse and beginner friendly. He has also written a birding guide: Birds of the Great Lakes! His talk has inspired me to consider how I might make birding more accessible to others.

The last keynote was by Kenn Kaufman, an author and long time naturalist. I volunteered to help sell some of his new book “The Birds Audubon Missed” so I had a chance to meet him to facilitate an autograph. Both in person and in his talk, Kenn was very down to earth despite having a kind of superstar reputation in the community. He has encyclopedic knowledge from years of birding and writing field guides. But he also is able to center the lives of both people and animals when talking about birds. His talk focused on the contrasts in birding, like how it is both easy to get into but also hard for experts depending on your perspective. He shared tidbits about his journey as a naturalist and special projects like being a science advisor for the Netflix show The Residence.

One story that stayed with me was from his time as a magazine editor. They were talking about a group of flycatchers that all look very similar. The story goes that they had a photo they wanted to use as an example of the classic markers of one species, but they couldn’t be 100% sure they had identified it correctly. It highlights that even for experts, there are birds you just can’t confidently identify without certain ideal conditions. But my main takeaway from his talk is that everyone should learn to identify plants and animals in their environment. He recommended a “Local 50” challenge as a way of encouraging that goal which I liked.

Extremely accurate illustration

The last headline evening event technically wasn’t a keynote. Instead it was a musical performance by Tommy Siegel and Billy Libby who are professional musicians but who also host a podcast called Extremely Accurate Bird Songs where they write and perform original songs for different bird species. The event was a smaller musical performance of their songs for those who were still around the festival. The two were hilarious especially if you are a bird nerd. I highly recommend you check out their podcast and Tommy Siegel’s work as a cartoonist. Some of the San Diego Bird Alliance staff also performed which made for a great way to end the festival.

Field Trips

The bird festival has a whole range of options for field trips, from one hour walks to multi-day tours. Because it was my first time, I chose my trips conservatively, opting to limit how much I would spend given I knew little about the festival or what my volunteering would look like.

The views from El Monte County Park

The first trip was to El Monte County Park east of the town of Lakeside. I chose it since it was a location I would be unlikely to visit otherwise and I loved the scenes of the valley park. Right at the start of the tour I was able to see my first Lark Sparrow with its distinctive head. I appreciated the guide’s knowledge of both the history of the park and the plant life. We had about a dozen people on the trip and a few of the festival’s “100 birds in a day” tour buses rolled into the park. My other favorite birds from that trip were the Wild Turkeys which I had never seen in San Diego, the Oak Titmouse, and the gregarious Acorn Woodpeckers which never fail to attract attention. This was also my first taste at helping other people find and identify birds. It was fun to spot new things and narrow down a suspected identification to a confirmed ID.

Lark Sparrow ebird.org Large and boldly patterned sparrow. Look for unique black, white, and rufous face pattern, brighter on adults and duller on immatures. Favors open areas with scattered trees when b…

My next trip was the short pelagic boat trip. Pelagic birds are a group that spend the majority of their life out over water, often flying thousands of miles a year over the ocean in search of fish. I was excited about this trip because it was a unique opportunity; I can’t take myself a mile offshore and even if I could my ID skills for this category of birds are very weak. Before the trip, I sat in on a talk by one of the guides about tips for IDing these birds. Honestly I didn’t remember much of it but I started to get a general sense of the type of birds and learned that their flying behavior is a key identifying tool. Some of the birds we ended up seeing on the boat like the Common Murre and Black-vented Shearwater I had actually seen before. But the Scripps’s Murrelet that let the boat come right up to it and the brief look I got at a Pomarine Jaeger were lifers for me. Plus with so many zoom lenses on the boat, there were some great pictures posted to the shared list afterwards. It was interesting to watch the group identify a strange bird that ended up being a leucistic Black-vented Shearwater, meaning it had an issue with its pigmentation. While some people saw a Rhinoceros Auklet and Pink-footed Shearwater, I had to take that off my list because I didn’t see them. I did get some great shots of a few water loving birds as the boat docked as they thought we might have some fish to share. My official duties were mainly to redirect people to the right parking area and to help the trip leader however they needed.

Our birding boat crew

Friday morning I volunteered to help with a trip at Marian Bear Natural Memorial Park. I was glad I was getting a free activity, but as we got into the walk the leader asked me to take a more active role in finding birds for the group. The trail we were on was narrow, often only wide enough for one person. So with a larger group, it was helpful to have people both in front and in the back pointing out birds. Plus the trip leader had some cool interpretive tidbits to share which was easier to do from the middle. It was fun being able to spot and ID birds for others. It also demonstrated how much local expertise helps and how a common bird like a Nuttall’s Woodpecker can actually be exciting for someone from out-of-town. My favorite find was the Hutton’s Vireo which was a lifer for me and one I had been looking for every time I saw a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. I also had a moment of pride when my Red-shouldered Hawk ID was upheld after the leader initially dismissed it. The trip leader from this trip was one of my favorites. She clearly had spent a lot of time at this park and showed a great personal connection with the space.

Hutton's Vireo ebird.org Drab olive overall with white eyering, bold wingbars, and thick bill. Found in forested areas with a mix of oak and conifers, usually foraging in the middle levels. Often in mixed…

Eurasian Wigeon ebird.org Breeding males are beautiful and distinctive with rich reddish-brown head, buffy forehead, pearly gray body, and pinkish breast. Look for large white wing patches in flight. Female…

Friday afternoon I joined the estuary walk from the conference center down to the San Diego river. This was a mass of about 200 people with multiple guides sponsored by an optics company. With a group that size it was a bit unwieldy, but there were so many experienced birders there. They helped me identify my first Eurasian Wigeon. I normally wouldn’t recommend having birding groups this size, but the open space along the riverbank and number of expert birders around made it work a lot better than I expected.

Saturday was a unique opportunity to see a Red-throated Pipit which is normally found in Asia but one individual had been spotted with some American Pipits on a local high school’s baseball field. I don’t chase down many rare bird alerts, so this was a fun experience and quite possibly the only time I will ever see this species. When we first found the flock I had a hard time identifying the vagrant among the more common species. They all looked like drab birds. But after an hour I was able to pick it out of the group. Still, I have no idea how someone would notice and confidently identify that bird the first time given how similar they are and how unexpected the Asian migrant is.

This bird is only starting to get a red throat, but the thicker striping is what sets it apart. See the list for comparable American Pipits.

The last official trip I joined was the Chollas Reservoir hike with the So Cal Bird Nerds. This trip had a large turnout with many of the keynote speakers and a focus on being beginner friendly. The atmosphere of this group was fun and collaborative. The demographics were also noticeably younger and more diverse. It was cool to see people my age hosting a hike and the way that the leaders emphasized that any bird you are excited about is a cool bird, no matter how common. Chollas Reservoir was a cool place to walk too, not far from my friends’ house and still very much in the metro area. I’ll definitely be watching the So Cal Bird Nerds calendar for more activities to join.

Across all the trips I saw 8 lifers which is great for a week. I hadn’t done many shared lists before so that experience was interesting and also fun. It made the trip more collaborative. I also was grateful for the trip leader. After speaking with a few of them, I could see how much effort they put into leading these trips and the weight of that responsibility.

Actual photo of my lifer Scripps's Murrelet thanks to another on the boat

Conference Hall

While I didn’t spend much time at the conference center Thursday or Friday, I had a more relaxed schedule during the weekend and was able to walk around the conference center. In the courtyard, there were about 2 dozen tables set up with various organizations and artists. I liked that many of the organizations had activities for kids. The artwork was also great and I bought a print and some stickers for myself. I also loved the custom address posters from Adventure Ed which has a graphic of all the common birds for any address which feels unique.

Walking around I learned about some organizations I want to check out like the San Diego Canyonlands organization which has some great field guides and online tools for exploring San Diego City’s unique urban canyon parks. The Punta Banda Conservation Alliance was also sharing about their private nature reserve near Ensenada in Baja California. Other organizations represented included the Buena Vista Audubon chapter from north county and the California State Parks service.

There were tour groups that gave talks describing unique habitats in places like Scotland, Argentina, and Portugal. I’ll admit that it was very effective marketing; I now want to bird all of Argentina. Birding tourism is big business and I would love to do some multi-day birding trips. But I fear a week-long birding tour might cause me to slip into purely counting birds and missing out on broader beauty in these countries. For now I’ll likely stick to my pattern of tacking on a day’s birding tour to other trips.

There was also a whole hall of companies catering to birders. Optics like binoculars and cameras were the biggest representatives. It’s crazy to think that some people have $10,000 to put towards a lens, but it was also cool to try out the best stuff around. In particular, the active image stabilized binoculars were impressive, but the large spotting scopes are also really cool. Some of the cameras were also impressive but that seems like a rabbit hole I can’t afford to fall down at this point.

I did try out several binoculars and bought a small pair of 8x32 binoculars from Vortex Optics for about $200. These were a nice step up from the cheap pair I’ve been throwing in my bag for the last few years offering clearer views in a compact form. I appreciated being able to try out several different companies’ products in one place because there are many aspects like the clarity, hand feel, or shape of the eye cup that are hard to measure or find stats for. I also bought a Phone Skope to help take digiscope photos through my binoculars, but I had trouble with the eye cup mounting and it got in the way of my eyes so it regretfully has not worked out how I hoped.

Several zoos and wildlife rehab organizations were at the festival with live animals like Zovargo and the Free Flight Exotic Bird Sanctuary. The coolest to me was the Avian Behavior Conservancy. They had several raptors out in the conference hall like the kestrel I posted earlier. But they also gave a talk where they brought out multiple birds and let them fly in the room. These included a barn owl, caracara, Swainson’s hawk, raven, and Andean Condor. Seeing the condor spread its wings to hop from one platform to another was very impressive at a short distance. I also let the raven take some cash from my hand and put it in a donation box which was a creative form of fundraising. The organization does some impressive work with training birds including lots of open air flying at their location in Escondido.

Mar 1, 2026, 7:06 AM UTC I’ve had so much fun at the San Diego Bird Festival this weekend both as a volunteer and participant. It’s been great getting outside, meeting new and experienced birders, learning about birds and conservation, and finding “bird joy”. Also I’ll never grow old of seeing American Kestrels like this guy!... birds birding SDBF2026 SDBirdFest

Volunteering

I’m really glad that I took the time to volunteer at the festival. It made scheduling and picking activities more complex, but it also made me feel more comfortable there. I often find I use “being helpful” as a way to reduce my social anxiety and in this situation it was extra effective. So even though it was my first bird festival, I quickly learned where things were, who to talk to, and where to find more information. Plus, I got to know quite a few great people at the organization which was kinda unexpected.

The majority of my volunteering was for the keynote events. These largely took place in the evening, after the sun went down, so it didn’t interfere with any birding. I helped out with things like check-ins, answering questions, and selling books. One of the nights I got more than I bargained for as I stayed late to help an older gentleman move dozens of chairs into a storage room. But that was all worth doing for free admission and to help the event run smoothly.

Helping out with the registration table was also a cool way to connect with people as they got their badge and started their time at the festival. Any tough questions got pushed up the chain of command to someone who could answer them. There were some issues with the registration system and which name cards were printed, but we were empowered enough to help those people get their time at the festival rolling.

My favorite volunteering activity was helping with a birding trip. I wasn’t sure how it would go when I signed up. But I quickly came to enjoy helping people find local birds. The trip I helped with was in a typical San Diego ecosystem so I knew most of the birds already. Plus the trip leader was open to having other people call out what they were seeing. I could use some practice showing people birds and knowing how to describe where they are. But I realized that I’m good enough at identification to be helpful.

Next year, I definitely want to volunteer again. I’ll try to help with more birding trips and will likely continue with the keynotes. But I probably won’t volunteer every day like I did this year because I want to participate in a full-day bus trip. I also realized that I could sign up for an extra shift last minute. So depending on how I’m feeling the week of the festival I might help out with something different.

Friends

In some ways, the bird festival felt a bit like summer camp. I made lots of new friends while I was there. Some I will/have met up with outside of the festival, but most I probably won’t ever see outside of that context. Due to the demographic skew of birders, the young adults in the group organically found each other. We would say hi in one place and talk again in another. By the end of the festival, we were coordinating what activities we wanted to see. On the last day, we exchanged Instagram handles or contact info.

It was really nice not feeling like I was alone in experiencing the festival and to have other people I could talk to who knew what I was talking about. Not everyone gets excited about pelagic birds or understands bird jokes, but bird people do!

Links

Finally, I picked up various links during the week as I went to talks, heard about tour groups, and checked out the tables of some local organizations. Most of those have been incorporated above, but here are a few extras!

• Stickers from the conference
• LISTERS: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching (YouTube) - A great, irreverent documentary on birding
• Birdie Game
• Borrego Springs Hawk Watch - Local bird migration notifications + a documentary
• Secret Lives of Animals, Episode 8 (Apple TV) - One speaker helped with the grebes
• Tree San Diego
• In Connecticut 92% of communities of color live in nature-deprived areas: study (CT Insider)

Takeaways

Going to the San Diego Bird Festival has really encouraged me to engage with the social side of birding. I learned a lot from the other birders there about identification and bird behavior. The talks have encouraged me to think critically about how to be a more inclusive birder. In particular, I want to make space for people to connect to their own bird joy.

There is a tension with bird conservation that leads to some birders shaming newcomers who don’t know the etiquette. But even worse, some birders, myself included, can get too focused on what they find interesting, and shame others for what they find interesting. The bird festival showed me not only what a great group birding trip looks like, but also to think about how to make those trips something everyone can enjoy.

After the festival, I’ve signed up for emails from a few organizations. I attended an event hosted by the San Diego Bird Alliance in north county. I’ve even gotten together with a new friend from the festival. I’m looking forward to attending next year and will be continuing the fun with the Birdathon in May.