Festival Schedule
Birding Photographer Fest
May 10-12, 2024
The “Black Belt Birding Photographer Fest” is a unique festival. Its purpose is to bring photographers from all over Alabama, and surrounding states, to highlight birding and the beauty of wildlife in the Alabama Black Belt region.
The Black Belt region is identified as a strip of rich, dark, cotton-growing dirt drawing immigrants, primarily from Georgia and the Carolinas, in an epidemic of “Alabama fever.” Following the forced removal of Native Americans, the Black Belt emerged as the core of a rapidly expanding plantation area. Geologically, the region lies within the Gulf South’s coastal plain in a crescent some 20-to-25-miles wide that stretches from eastern, south-central Alabama into northwestern Mississippi. This unusually fertile Black Belt (or prairies) soil is produced by the weathering of an exposed limestone.
After the war, Peter Newport Bragg moved to Alabama in 1828 to the small community that now bears his name, Braggs. Alabama.
It is here on the Bragg Homestead that the “Black Belt Birding Photographer Fest” will be held. It includes a Friday night reception, breakfast, lunch each day, dinner on the lake Saturday night with two complementary drinks after dinner by the fire pits on the lake. Bottled water and snacks will be provided on tours.
We are inviting photographers from all over Alabama, and the surrounding states, to come help capture the simplistic beauty of birds, wildlife and history in this historical area of Alabama.
Make plans now to attend. For more information, and to register, go to blackbeltbirding.com. You can also call Demp Bell at (251) 593-1770, or email [email protected] for more information.
The festival is only for photographers of birding and wildlife, as well as outdoor writers. It is not open to the public. Festival schedule
Friday – 5 p.m. Reception and welcome on the lake at Braggs Homestead.
Saturday – 7 a.m. Breakfast with coffee, Southern pastries
8 a.m. Birding tour
Noon Lunch back at the homestead
2 p.m. Birding tour
5 p.m. Dinner on the lake with historical figure “Davy Crockett” and drinks by the firepits on the lake. Live music.
Sunday –
7 a.m. Breakfast
8 a.m. Birding tour
Noon Lunch
1 p.m. Departure
Includes: All meals, activities and Transportation on Tours.
