A Look Back at 2025 and a Look Forward to 2026

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By Kiki Sonnen

The Saint Paul Bird Alliance achieved numerous milestones this past year by engaging our diverse community to enjoy, understand, and protect birds and the habitats necessary for all living things to thrive. You can review our annual report here. 

As an all-volunteer organization, these milestones wouldn’t have been possible without everyone’s dedication and hard work. Let’s celebrate our accomplishments and recognize that we can do even more. 

How? By encouraging more of you to get involved. We can use volunteers to support our program, field trip, and grants committees. If you have a background in communications (e-newsletters, websites, etc.), we would greatly appreciate your help. We need speakers, writers, presenters, and artists who can engage schoolchildren, seniors, civic groups, and others. Please send us a note sharing your passion for birds and how you would like to get involved.

2025 milestones included:

  • 38 field birding events (with over 650 attendees) throughout Ramsey, Washington, and Hennepin Counties. These included our first “accessibility” events (in collaboration with Land of Lakes Bird Alliance), which we plan to expand in 2026.  
  • Provided ~ $25K in grants to non-profit organizations that align with our mission.
  • Significant progress for our Kestrel Project. A new nest box was installed at a new location in Pig’s Eye Park. Volunteers installed two new nest boxes, which replaced older existing boxes, at Rice Creek, North, and Tamarack. Young were successfully fledged at these locations for the first time. Overall, Kestrel nesting pairs successfully fledged at six out of eight nest boxes in 2025.
  • Nine speaker programs taught us about the wonder of birds. My favorite was Lee Pfanmueller’s exciting debut of an update to the Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas. Our December program was fabulous, with Stan Tekiela’s talk about how wonderfully different birds are from us. If you missed him, make plans now to hear him speak at the May 2026 Warbler Weekend in Lake City.
  • Habitat Restoration work at Arden Hills Army Training Site and Como Park’s Cardinal Woods.
  • Support of the Big River Journey that saw 1,600 + 4th graders learn about conservation and birds.
  • Advocacy work focused on Saint Paul’s adoption of bird-friendly building ordinances and the Keystone WMA.
  • Continuation of Warbler Weekend with record attendance.
  • Many organizational process improvements.

As 2026 begins, let’s commit to doing more to protect birds. Our planet needs us because when we save birds, we also save ourselves.

Here’s what 2026 looks like:

  • We will continue collaborating with the Land of Lakes Bird Alliance to produce nine engaging speaker programs.  Do you have ideas or speakers you think would be a good fit?  Contact us.
  • We’re planning 61 Birding Events – our traditional ones, plus new ones involved with Darner Dragonfly Migration, Winter Eagles, Feeder Watching, River Waterfowl, Big Lake Waterfowl, Sketching Birds, and more.
  • We will continue collaborating with our special partners Urban Bird Collective, St Paul Public Libraries, Friends of Swede Hollow, Pig’s Eye Park Friends, Land of Lakes Bird Alliance, Upper Mississippi National Audubon, Friends of St Paul and Ramsey County Parks and Trails.
  • We will sponsor 11 Birds & Beers at Sweeney’s in St Paul.  Please check out the events calendar for more information.
  • We will sponsor Warbler Weekend.
  • We will be tabling at the Twin Cities Urban Bird Festival in Brooklyn Park on May 2 and at the Landscape Revival Plant Sale in Lake Elmo on June 4. 
  • We are continuing to strengthen our Board of Directors, Advocacy & Conservation Committee, Education Committee, Program Committee, and internal operations. 

You’re invited to join in the fun! Contact us