The celebration will include hundreds of seminars, bird walks, art contests, banding demonstrations, forest and wetland tours, and other events at national wildlife refuges, bird sanctuaries, parks, and other outdoor venues.
Every state has at least one event.
International Migratory Bird Day is a celebration of this spectacle but it also is a day to let people know that populations of many of these cherished species are in decline. With 65 million participants, bird watching is one of America's most popular hobbies. This spending supports tens of thousands of jobs across the country. But even as bird watching has grown in popularity, many songbird populations have declined sharply in recent years. These include species such as the Kirtland's warbler, the black-capped vireo, the cerulean warbler, and the mountain plover.