INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — With a bird-themed art show at Bethel Creek House and a weekend of county-wide guided bird tours, the county’s Cultural Council has teamed up with the Pelican Island Preservation Society to stage the first annual Treasure Coast Birding Festival next month.
The ambitious undertaking launched by Vero newcomer Debbie Avery aims to eventually bring birders by the hundreds to Vero.
“Birders stay longer and spend more than golfers and fishermen combined. That’s what the state of Florida is pushing,” says Avery, a former economic development director for Glades County who started Lake Okeechobee’s Big O Birding Festival in 2002. She started another birding festival when she moved to Colorado. She is now a part-time office assistant at the Cultural Council.
“These birding people are serious. They’re well-to-do, they’re very softspoken people and they like to bird.” Avery sought out the Cultural Council to host the festival. The council, which must show that it draws tourists to the area to receive tourist tax dollars, was eager to sign on.
An economic impact study of the Space Coast Birding Festival in Merritt Island shows last year’s event, its 15th year, drew in nearly $1,000,000 to the area. More than 1,200 birders registered for the weeklong festival and hundreds more came as vendors, tour guides and media.
“Eco-tourism including birding is one of the four pillars of tourism that we’re trying to drive into the county,” says Keith Kite, owner of the Springhill Suites hotel which is offering package rates for the birding festival weekend. Kite says he offers similar deals at his Hampton Inn in Okeechobee, after the director of tourism there added that county to the Big O Birding Festival. Kite says the hotel sales staff targets specific cities with strong birding clubs. He points to the state’s calculation from 2006 that birders that year spent $3 billion dollars in Florida on their pastime.
Getting the word out has been Avery’s biggest challenge. She has put notices on birding websites, and bought one small ad in a birding magazine. Professional guide Kristin Beck, who will lead a tour for the festival, is hoping the guides will use social media to push their tours. She says a woman from Texas contacted her through Facebook looking for hotels in the area. Someone from New Jersey reached her through her LinkedIn account. Beck sits on the county’s tourism board. Avery also had an enthusiastic response from Costa d’Este Resort’s Monica Smiley. “She said they’d been doing research on target niche markets and birders are at the top of their list.” This year, though, the event should be small, Avery says.
And that’s just fine with the birders – and the birds. Smaller groups mean quieter hikes, disturbing the birds less, and increasing birders’ ability to hear not just bird calls but the guides themselves, who are some of the top bird authorities in the region and the state. Nature photographer Bob Montanaro will give a tour of the Treasure Hammock Ranch. Veteran birder Billi Wagner, who spent three months counting birds in remote areas of Nevada, will lead a sunrise lagoon-front walk in Spoonbill Marsh, followed by a trip to Sebastian Inlet. Kristin Beck, who in addition to giving tours professionally is a self-taught photographer, will take a group to Blue Cypress Lake, one of the largest rookeries of ospreys in the U.S. Full-time birder David Simpson, one of the most knowledgeable birders in Florida, will lead a tour of T.M. Goodwin Waterfowl Management Area near Fellsmere, a 3,800-acre wetland and prime viewing area for migratory ducks.
Jane Schnee and Judy Elseroad will introduce birders to Sebastian’s beloved scrub jay population. Elseroad has tracked 40 jay families for a decade. Schnee has monitored the birds for three years and serves on the board of the Pelican Island Audubon Society. Meanwhile, back at Bethel Creek House, bird-themed artwork will be on sale benefiting the Cultural Council and the Pelican Island Preservation Society.
Artists donate 30 percent of sales and pay $10 per work to display there. There will also be vendors on hand, and volunteers from the Pelican Island group manning a breakfast bar – many of the tours meet up there at dawn. Lecturers on Saturday afternoon include Bob Montanaro; Dale Gawlik, director of the environmental sciences department at Florida Atlantic University; and Lucy Miller of the Nature Conservancy.
The $50 registration fee includes lectures, dinner and a silent auction at the Elks Lodge on Saturday night. Montanaro will be the evening’s keynote speaker, and the winners of the juried art show will be announced. There are separate fees for each of the tours.
“We think it’s a great idea,” said Richard Baker, president of the Pelican Island Audubon Society. He laments that the festival was scheduled the same weekend that Audubon has a state meeting in Sarasota.
“That cripples us a little bit in participating, though some of our best birders are giving tours and giving lectures. We probably would have been a lot more involved.”
His other concern was for one migratory species that will not yet have arrived in force. “It’s a little early for the snowbirds to come down,” he says. “But there are still plenty of birds around.”
The Treasure Coast Birding Festival takes place Friday through Sunday, Oct. 26-28. For more information call 770-4857 or go to www.cultural-council.org.