Description
Saturday, May 15 at 6:00 pm
Join us for an evening of guest speakers, presentation of the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival’s Birder of the Year and Don Paul Lifetime Achievement awards, and keynote address given by professional birder, author, and self-proclaimed woodpecker fanatic, Steve Shunk. Steve will present his address “Woodpeckers: Utah’s Keystone Carpenters”.
Tickets are required to attend the Keynote Address and can be purchased during the online registration process. Options to purchase a vegetarian or gluten-free meal ticket will be available. Dinner Menu coming soon!
Seating is limited. Ticket sales will close on Sunday, May 2, 2027 at midnight or when seating is full.
Woodpeckers: Utah’s Keystone Carpenters
Woodpeckers are one of the world's most specialized bird families, and North America's woodpeckers play critical roles in our continent's forests and woodlands. Nowhere else on Earth are woodpeckers such important players in woodland ecology. Join naturalist and woodpecker specialist, Steve Shunk, for an exciting journey into the lives and times of Utah’s amazing woodpeckers.
Steve will share the secrets of woodpecker anatomy and translate structural adaptations into the fascinating behaviors we love to watch among our woodland carpenters. Each species’ anatomy suits its unique lifestyle, with some adapted for aerial acrobatics and others for extracting ants from underground burrows. Some woodpeckers shred tree bark for beetle larvae, while others drill tiny holes to eat the nutritious sap. Steve will demystify woodpecker feeding, courtship, communication, and nesting behaviors—including the reasons why woodpeckers pound on our houses and what we can do about it. He will also reveal the keystone ecological roles our local woodpeckers play in Utah’s forests and woodlands, and he will send you home with a mission: Prepare to be entertained, educated, and inspired as ambassadors for woodpecker conservation.
About Steve Shunk
Steve Shunk is a professional birder, author, woodpecker fanatic, compulsive traveler, scuba diver, and general nature nut. He has fed leeches (his own blood) in Malaysian Borneo and watched Spotless Starlings swarm around Sicily's Greek ruins. Steve’s North American guiding adventures have taken him from Utqiagvik, Alaska, to Florida’s Dry Tortugas. His favorite destination used to be Alberta’s boreal forest, but recent explorations have led him to favor the cushion plants and condors of Peru’s high Andes.
Steve started birding in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989, and he moved to central Oregon’s ‘Woodpecker Wonderland’ in 1997, where 11 woodpecker species breed annually. This phenomenon has fueled a 30-year obsession with this charismatic family of birds. Steve founded the region’s woodpecker festival in 2008, and his Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America was published in 2016.
Steve’s work as a field biologist has taken him from the Coast Range of Oregon to California’s Sierra Nevada. Most recently, he conducted woodpecker surveys in the Central Oregon Cascades. While in Oregon, Steve also co-founded the East Cascades Bird Conservancy (now the East Cascades Bird Alliance). Steve started the Paradise Birding tour company in 1997 and has become a seasoned professional naturalist with guiding experience in 9 states and 13 countries across four continents, including nearly 60 tours for Arizona-based Naturalist Journeys. Steve now resides in Cabo Corrientes, Jalisco, Mexico, where he and his wife, Lizzy Martinez, serve as resident naturalists at the Rancho Primavera Bird Sanctuary.
Details
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Date
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Start & End Time
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6:00 pm
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Meeting Location
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Western Sports Park - Building 4
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Guide(s)
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Steve Shunk
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Cost
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$50
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Available Spots
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120
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Activity Level
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Accessible
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Transportation
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Good For
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Beginner,
Intermediate,
Advanced,
Families with Children