Welcome to the CORTEZ CULTURAL CENTER |
MAY 2024 EVENT |
The Annual Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival provides a popular venue for visiting southwestern Colorado during the second weekend in May. |
Nestled between alpine and mesa forests and scenic desert canyons, the Four Corner’s intriguingly diverse landscapes, and mild climate, have drawn people to the region for generations. Ancestral Pueblo farmers dwelled in places now known as Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, and Canyon of the Ancients. Today’s meadows, pastures, cultivated fields, historic orchards, stock ponds and reservoirs establish habitat for a wide-spectrum of migratory and resident birds. Some species, such as Lucy’s Warbler, are found no place else in Colorado. Hosted by the Cortez Cultural Center, the UMMV Birding Festival draws upon the expertise of regional wildlife specialists who volunteer as tour guides and guest lecturers. Each year new tours, and repeat favorites, explore an array of birding hotspots that attract avian species from loons and grebes to sparrows, grosbeaks, and finches. Overnight tours within easy driving distance offer different environs and the prospect of encountering species not found within the Cortez area. Southwest Colorado’s first birding records date to the 1880s. Tours that combine birding with regional archaeology, ecology, and history take UMMV birders into the realms of gulls, shorebirds, waterfowl, Osprey, Peregrine Falcon, Bald and Golden eagles, elusive owls, woodpeckers, flycatchers and phoebes, American Dipper, towhees, crossbills, and colorful bluebirds, tanagers, and warblers. The festival’s birding tally has climbed to 180 species. The UMMV Birding Festival designs activities and tours to fit a gamut of abilities, ages, and interests. Early evening lectures, social hours, a bird-themed art show, and banquet add to the festival’s five days of enjoyment — learning, socializing, and most importantly birding. | 2024 Featured Keynote Speaker Tiffany Kersten Our UMMV Birding Festival 2024 Keynote Speaker, Tiffany Kersten, is a Wisconsin native, turned Texan by way of New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. Hooked on birds since age 12, she Tiffany taught about raptor identification and migration with the Cape May Bird Observatory, monitored shorebirds on Cape Cod, and banded Honeycreepers in Hawaii. She finally landed in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas where she first worked at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, then Quinta Mazatlán World Birding Center, and managed the McAllen Nature Center, before completing a Lower 48 States Big Year in 2021. She founded Nature Ninja Birding Tours in January of 2022. She has been connecting people to nature through the joy of birding since 2006. 2024 Keynote Address: “Birdie Big Year: Elevating Women Birders” Tiffany Kersten didn’t set out to do a Big Year, but after a series of unanticipated and serendipitous events, she suddenly found herself amidst one. As a sexual assault survivor, she spent 2021 traveling to all corners of the country, tallying birds and gifting personal safety alarms to women she met along the way. Her goal was to see 700 species, and to raise awareness of women’s safety in the outdoors. She ended up surpassing her goal and setting a new record, with 726 species. In her presentation, Tiffany will lead us through the fear, empowerment, struggles, and healing that all played vital roles in the personal growth she experienced on this wild adventure. Tiffany will present the 2024 UMMV Birding Festival’s Keynote Address “Birdie Big Year: Elevating Women Birders” on Saturday, May 18th, 2024 at 5:30 pm at the Cortez Elks Lodge, 2100 N Dolores Rd. (Hwy 145), Cortez. |
graduated from Northland College with a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology. She has been a Certified Interpretive Guide through the National Association for Interpretation and spent over a decade as an environmental educator.Birding Festival General Information
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