We are excited about the 2026 Birding Festival! Save these dates:
May 6 - May 10, 2026
For an idea of the tours, lectures and bird sightings available, take a quick tour through our 2025 Festival events.
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.
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 hawks and grebes to sparrows, grosbeaks, and finches. Overnight tours 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, 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.
to Embrace the World’s Most Rewarding and Frustrating Activity”
Montana author Sneed B. Collard III has written more than one hundred books for children and adults including the humorous award-winning adult guide Birding for Boomers—And Everyone Else Brave Enough to Embrace the World’s Most Rewarding and Frustrating Activity.
Collard began birding with his son Braden more than a decade ago and their bird-related travels have taken them across the US as well as to South America, Europe, and Asia. These birding experiences inspired their blog FatherSonBirding.com as well as a host of Sneed’s children’s books such as Birds of Every Color; Fire Birds—Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests; Woodpeckers—Drilling Holes and Bagging Bugs; and Waiting for a Warbler.
Sneed is a regular contributor to BWD, Montana Outdoors, and other magazines and is a popular, award-winning speaker. He has keynoted birding festivals and conferences in California, Washington, Texas, Arizona, and Montana. To learn more, visit his websites www.sneedbcollardiii.com and www.FatherSonBirding.com.
Author of more than 100 books for children and adults, acclaimed author Sneed B. Collard III traces his path from budding biologist to book author to passionate Boomer Birder. After sharing how his son, Braden, and he first fell in love with birds and started learning about them, he’ll share some of the joys and challenges of being a “birder of a certain age,” and how all birders can overcome obstacles to enjoy the world’s most rewarding and frustrating activity. He might just share a tidbit about a search to spot a Green-tailed Towhee.
Please check back for the exact date, time and place of Sneed Collard’s 2026 Keynote Address.
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Birding Festival General Information
- The Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival is the major fundraiser for the Cortez Cultural Center. All proceeds benefit the Center.
- All tours require pre-registration.
- A registration fee is required for all tours except as noted. Full registration includes keynote banquet and all lectures. Daily registration includes that day's lectures. Full registration is required in order to qualify for the free early bird t-shirt.
- All lunches provided by Once Upon a Sandwich unless otherwise noted.
- Unless otherwise noted, tours will return to the Center at approximately 3:00 pm.
- Carpools/caravanning will be used for all tours. Drivers will be reimbursed for gas by passengers at the GSA rate of 66 cents per mile, divided among all participants in the vehicle.
- Tour size is generally 13 or less.
- Cancellations considered on a case-by-case basis up to 21 days prior to start of Festival. All cancellations subject to a processing fee.
- Availability of restrooms depends on the tour. Nearly all guides scout out restroom locations as well as bird species. Some tours are in parks or other facilities that have established restrooms. Some have outhouses. Others, the only option are bushes. Usually, the leader will mention the restroom plan at the beginning of the tour.
- All tours depart from and return to the Cortez Cultural Center.
- Tour times listed are the DEPARTURE time. Please arrive 15 minutes prior.
For Birding Festival information email diane.cherbak@gmail.com
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