The Urban Birding Festival

September 18-20, 2026

Photo: Magnolia Warbler, Mark Knoll

2026 Silent Auction For The Urban Birding Festival

This year, we are raising money to support festival scholarships, and education initiatives led by our partner organizations (Chicago Bird Alliance, Chicago Ornithological Society, Red Hill Birding, Chicago BIPOC Birders, and the Feminist Bird Club Chicago)!

Auction is now open!

Bidding end September 19th at 9 pm

Winning items will be available for pick-up on Sunday at The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

Auction Website

Registration Pick-up Information

The registration table will be in the lobby of the Peggy Notebeart Nature Museum, where you can pick up your festival name tag and swag bag (if you pre-ordered a t-shirt, you will get it here as well).

Registration Hours

Friday, September 18th: 10 am - 4 pm and 6 pm - 8 pm (during the Birds and Brews)

Saturday, September 19th: 10 am - 4 pm

Sunday, September 20th: 10 am - 4 pm

2026 Keynote Presentation: Extremely Accurate Bird Songs

Tommy Siegel (Jukebox the Ghost) and Billy Libby (Ingrid Michaelson) are two world-touring musicians on a daring quest: to write a song about every bird species and document the process in podcast form — Since there are only 11,145, it shouldn’t be too tough!

The result is “Extremely Accurate Bird Songs“ a comedy/nature podcast dedicated to learning about bird species with the most absurd and high-effort method imaginable. In each episode, Tommy and Billy do an irreverent (but largely factual…) deep dive on each bird species, followed by the worldwide debut of an original, bird-specific genre parody song meant to fully capture the bird’s unique essence, presented to a bird expert guest who decides if the song is Extremely Accurate (or not). Just wait until you hear the Alice in Chains grunge-metal of the American Crow… or the Fine Young Cannibals runway strut of the Red-winged Blackbird… or the psychedelic desert rock journey of the Gambel’s Quail… Think of them as the birding world's version of "Flight of the Conchords".