Birding Festivals in the Adirondacks:
2015 Great Adirondack Birding Celebration

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Join us for the 13th annual Great Adirondack Birding Celebration — the longest running boreal birding festival in the Northeast. The festival will be held 5 - 7 June 2015 at the Paul Smith's College Visitor Interpretive Center (VIC) in Paul Smiths, New York. You may sign up for the full three-day event or attend selected events, taking advantage of our a la carte pricing. The three-day event will offer a wide variety of activities designed to appeal to both experienced and beginning birders, including:

• Two all-day birding field trips on Friday: Birding Across the Adirondacks and Birding the Saint Lawrence Valley
• Saturday and Sunday morning field trips to boreal birding hot spots including:
• Bloomingdale Bog
• Whiteface Mountain
• Intervale Lowlands
• Madawaska Flow
• Birding by Ear at the VIC
• Beginner Birding at the VIC
• Heaven Hill Farm/John Brown Homestead
• Teddy Roosevelt Birding Challenge
• Informative lectures and workshops
• VIC Deck Sit
• Birds of a Feather Invitational Art Show
• Pre-festival activities on Thursday afternoon and evening

The keynote speaker is Chris Rimmer, conservation biologist and founding director of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.  He will speak on the conservation of the Bicknell's Thrush, drawing on the findings of twenty years of research. 

Some of the boreal species that participants in the birding festival hope to find include the Black-backed Woodpecker, Gray Jay, Boreal Chickadee, Bicknell's Thrush and a variety of migrating warblers, such as the Golden-winged Warbler.

List of birds seen during the 2014 Great Adirondack Birding Celebration

The 3,000-acre Paul Smith's College VIC is an eBird Birding Hotspot. It contains every habitat type found in the Adirondack Park with the exception of alpine vegetation. Included on the property is a 60-acre marsh, five ponds, several brooks and swamps, bogs, fens, and varied forest types, most notably northern boreal forest. The site includes significant glacial and geological features and provides scenic vistas of Saint Regis Mountain and Jenkins Mountain. The VIC property includes over 25 miles of trails, including 6 miles of interpretive trails, for spring, summer, and fall use. An interactive Trail Map is available here.

Trip Reports from the 2015 Great Adirondack Birding Celebration

• Bird the VIC Walk (6 June 2015)
• Intervale Lowlands Trip Report (6 June 2015)
• Intervale Lowlands Trip Report (7 June 2015)
• Heaven Hill Farm Trip Report (7 June 2015)

Information on Previous Great Adirondack Birding Celebrations
2014 GABC
2013 GABC
2012 GABC

Trip reports from selected field trips during previous Great Adirondack Birding Celebrations are available here:

• Intervale Lowlands Bird Walk (8 June 2014)
• Madawaska Flow Bird Walks (7 & 8 June 2014)
• Intervale Lowlands Bird Walk (2 June 2013)
• Beginner Birder Workshop (1 June 2013)
• Beginner Bird Walk (2 June 2012)
• Intervale Lowlands Bird Walk (3 June 2012)
• Madawaska Flow Bird Walk (3 June 2012)
• Wetland Walk (3 June 2011)