World Bird Festival 2007

The World Bird Festival celebrates the incredible variety and beauty of the birds of our planet, highlighting their importance for people and cultures.

BirdLife's World Bird Festival, held in October of every year in the Americas, encourages the conservation of birds through a diversity of activities including nature walks, indoor meetings, lectures, seminars, performances (music, theatre, films and poetry readings), children's events (face painting, bird-costume making, painting competitions), and exhibitions (paintings, prints, photographs).

In October 2007, join BirdLife in celebrating the Aquatic Birds of the Americas. These are birds that depend on aquatic habitats to survive, such as lakes, rivers, swamps, peat bogs, salt marshes, continental shelf waters and open pelagic waters. Aquatic birds are a diverse group of species which include:

• Seabirds - primarily feeding in open ocean
• Coastal waterbirds - using the interface between land and salt and freshwater
• Wading birds - that principally feed by wading in shallow waters
• Marshbirds - often secretive, feeding primarily in freshwater marshes.
• Shorebirds - typically found along shorelines of oceans, rivers, and lakes
• Waterfowl - ducks, geese and swans, many of which are traditionally harvested

Nancy Camel The Roseate Spoonbill, a beautiful representative of the waterbirds Zoom In

Aquatic birds tie the natural and human communities of the Americas together. Taken together, the distributions of aquatic bird populations form a collage of overlapping ranges that blanket the Western Hemisphere and the world. Within their ranges, millions of individual birds undertake seasonal migrations along waterways, coastlines and currents, crossing political boundaries unaware. Among their ranks are some of the longest distance migrants on the planet, such as the Arctic Tern Sterna paradisaea, migrating each year between the Arctic and Antarctic oceans.

The World Bird Festival 2007 celebrates aquatic birds and promotes the importance of the conservation of their habitats. BirdLife invites organizations throughout the Americas to participate in this event. To obtain more information or register your event, please contact the Americas Secretariat, BirdLife International.