Wings Over Willcox Birding and Nature Festival

Every year, stately, migrating sandhill cranes leave their summer nesting grounds in the north and fly south to the farm fields around Willcox, Arizona.

The red patch of bare skin on a sandhill crane's head is thought to be important for mating rituals (Photo: ©iStockphoto)

Although Willcox is not as well-known as famous sandhill crane overwintering sites in New Mexico, Texas and Nebraska, southeastern Arizona is still a good place to see these magnificant birds.

Anywhere from 17,000 – 40,000 sandhill cranes winter in the area around the small town of Willcox. The birds begin arriving in November, coming from as far away as Alaska and Siberia.

Willcox celebrates the cranes and other winter migrant birds with their annual Wings Over Willcox Birding and Nature Festival. The next festival is January 11 through January 15, 2012.

Birders and wildlife watchers from around the world come to this popular birding festival to participate in birding tours, photo and birding workshops, natural history seminars, walking tours of historic Willcox, and even ghost town visits.

The festival also has a nature expo with live animal displays, special activities for kids, and vendors selling birding guides, binoculars and other nature-related items.

But the highlight for most festival-goers is seeing thousands of sandhill cranes roosting at sites like Whitewater Draw and the Willcox Playa, or watching them take off and soar in huge formations around the Sulfur Springs Valley, which stretches from Willcox south to Douglas at the Arizona border.

This year was a good year for seeing cranes in the Sulfur Springs Valley as the late winter rain and snowfall in 2010 provided additional food and habitat for the birds. The 2011 festival count of sandhill cranes totaled 29,900 individuals.

While sandhill cranes are the highlight of the Wings Over Willcox festival, they are only one of some 500-plus bird species that winter in the area.

Birders willing to brave cold temperatures and possible rain have a chance of seeing wintering waterfowl, shorebirds and raptors.

Some of the many bird species include snow geese, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, ferruginous hawks, horned larks, yellow-rumped warblers, scaled quail and a variety of sparrows.

The banquet speaker for the 2012 festival is ornithologist Ted Floyd, the editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association.

Floyd's presentation is titled "Birding at Night: The Final Frontier."

The Wings Over Willcox Festival requires pre-registration. The 2012 registration opens September 1, 2011 at 8:00 a.m.

Seminars are free. Tours range in cost from $15 - $105 per person, but a few tours are free.

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