Registration for the 2023 Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival opened Wednesday, Feb. 1. The festival will take place from Thursday through Sunday, April 27 to 30, at Dead Horse Ranch State Park.
The festival consists of various trips and workshops led by guides and local experts. These include hikes ranging from easy to moderate, bird identification exercises, a canoe trip and more.
The theme of this year’s festival is “Riverside Residents.” It will introduce participants to animals living in and along the Verde River and explain the overall importance of keeping the Verde River healthy, especially for bird populations.
The poster bird for this year’s event is the vermilion flycatcher, a brightly-colored bird that perches in open areas near water. As their name suggests, flycatchers watch for flying insects and catch them in midair.
The festival will feature a keynote speaker, Rick Taylor, author of “Birds of Arizona.” Taylor conducted an eight-year study of trogons, which include the elegant long-tailed quetzal. He has founded a birding company dedicated to responsible ecotourism and has published multiple books on the birds of the Arizona region.
In conjunction with the festival, the Friends of the Verde River will host their BioBlitz, an event that involves residents taking photographs of plants and animals and learning the names of those species.
“What they’re doing is contributing to the science of understanding our biodiversity,” Nancy Steele, executive director of the Friends of the Verde River, said. “Knowing the name of a plant or animal creates a stronger relationship to it.”
The BioBlitz will start on Earth Day, April 22, and will run until early May. Residents can venture anywhere in or along the Verde River system to photograph the natural world and then upload their images to iScientist. This species data will be used to better understand the current state of the Verde River habitat, and collecting it will encourage people to spend time outdoors.
Dead Horse Ranch State Park will also hold a Family Fun Day on April 29 that will be free and open to the public.
The festival’s objective is to bring together education, recreation and community participation to foster an awareness of conservation and a feeling of connectedness to the Verde River and riparian areas among local residents.
For more information, visit verderiver.org
