SOUTHWEST WINGS
Birding and Nature Festival in Sierra Vista, Arizona
Greatest Little Birding Festival in the United States - since 1991
Our mission is to promote nature-based tourism and environmental awareness in southeastern Arizona
​FIELD TRIPS | Guides | KEYNOTE DINNER | FREE PROGRAM | PRESENTERS | VENDORS​ | FESTIVAL ARTIST
keynote dinner ​2023
Thursday August 3, 2023, 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Cochise College Sierra Vista, Community Room, Bldg 1000
Keynote Speaker: Alvaro Jaramillo
We are privileged to welcome distinguished ornithologist, bird tour leader and author Alvaro Jaramillo as our Keynote speaker. Alvaro will be talking about one of his favorite bird families, the New World Blackbirds.
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Alvaro has been birding since he was 11 years old. Born in Chile, raised in Canada, he now lives in California where he runs 'Alvaro’s Adventures', which offers birding-based tours around the globe, as well as California pelagic trips. Alvaro has a BS in Zoology, a masters in Evolutionary Biology, and is a senior biologist with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. He is the author of Birds of Chile, New World Blackbirds: The Icterids, and the ABA Field Guide to the Birds of California. He is the co-presenter of Life List: A Birding Podcast with George Armistead, writes for many birding magazines, actively engages in many birding forums and has a particular interest in gulls.
New World Blackbirds: The coolest birds in the Americas?
Join Alvaro Jaramillo as he leads us through the fascinating world of the New World Blackbirds - the Icteridae, the family that includes blackbirds, cowbirds and grackles, many colorful species such as the orioles and meadowlarks, as well as the amazing caciques and oropendolas of the tropics.
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Icterids are found only in the Americas, and they are some our most interesting land birds; their behavior, mating strategies, and breeding biology are more diverse than any other group of songbirds in our continent. Some of the antics, behaviors, and details of their lifestyle are beyond what you find in multiple different families of birds, let alone in one family.
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Find out how grackles are like Elephant Seals. Discover that the cowbirds and bison story is a myth. Learn how caciques do more social climbing than the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills! All this and more! Alvaro will convince you that this group, with many of its members often cast aside as being ‘common’ or even ‘evil’, is perhaps among the coolest and most interesting family of land birds anywhere!
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The Keynote Dinner is $45 per person.
All registered festival attendees can purchase advance tickets to the Thursday night Keynote and dinner online in the field trip section of the Cvent platform. To register and reserve your space select Keynote from the August 3 field trip choices HERE.
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If you are a local area resident you can reserve your space in person (without registering online), on Tuesday, August 1 from 3:00PM - 4:00PM at our Welcome Desk at Library in Bldg 900 at Cochise College, Sierra Vista campus.
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Come and enjoy a scrumptious Southwest themed dinner created by famed Chef Chris Przylucki of Cochise College's Aladdin Foods.
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