This year's festival will be held May 11-13. For the first time, a full day of activities will be offered on Friday. Popular events include birding tours, bird banding demonstrations, birding by ear, and talks on wild birds of prey. New events this year include bird-scaping for wildlife, habitat birding, and presentations on Wisconsin's bats and Horicon's herons and egrets. The Bachhuber Wetland Flowage, a new 200-acre wetland flowage west of the DNR headquarters, will also be dedicated during the festival.
All events are open to the public, and most events are free.
Registration is required for the First Light Bus Tour and for the Habitat Birding Experience. Past festivals have been very well attended, said Michael, who anticipates a good turnout this year as well. Now we have the seven weekends of Marsh Melodies. So many of our marshes have been neglected already, plowed under. Hopefully with all these programs, people will realize the importance of the Marsh.