Wings Over Willcox 2014 is coming in January
Wings Over Willcox (WOW) is an annual event held in the middle of January every year. This year is the 21st time that the birding event has been held. The WOW event hosts various tours, seminars, contests and a banquet. There are over 60 different events taking place during the time frame. Birding tours and many chances for photography are available at different venues all over Cochise County. Twin Lakes, The Willcox Playa and White Water Draw are some of the locations that draw the birding tours. Children’s activities such as building bird nesting boxes are available. It is less than 2 months away from the start of WOW and already some of the more popular events are sold out with wait lists for them filling as you read this. Opportunities to get on a tour are still available but they are filling up fast. Too see what is available, click here on the link to the events page. 
A brochure of the entire experience is available online on the website so that you can download it and read it at your leisure.
I notice that there is one contest with Wings Over Wilcox which would be interesting for me. The contest is the Anniversary Challenge. This challenge is open to everyone and its aim is for entrants to find and list as many of the 100 birds that were seen in the Sulphur Springs Valley prior to 1900. Some of the birds were sighted back in the 1700s. The list can be found on the website challenge page. A bird themed poetry and a Haiku contest is also on the agenda.
Egret Hunting
During Wings Over Wilcox, one of the main attractions is the Sand Hill Cranes that winter in the Sulphur Springs Valley. A lot of water fowl winter in Cochise County and can be found at the bird refuges throughout the County. There are many birding locales that will be visited on tours originating at the WOW site headquarters. White Water Draw is one of the sites that is featured by the tour operators. We blogged about this location last year and you can click here to read our blog. White Water draw is about the same driving distance from Willcox as it is from Down by The River B and B.
There are other non birding things to do during Wings Over Wilcox. There will be seminars on the history of sites such as Fort Bowie, the Willcox Playa, ghost towns, insects, herpetology, astronomy in Arizona dark skies, the local agriculture as well as wine tasting. I have written about the Willcox wineries in previous blogs. So there are a lot of different things to do during this time at the WOW Festival.
Wineries are nearby.
Speaking of lodging, at the present time Wings Over Willcox Lodging during the event time frame is getting scarce. It is already the end of November and many locations around Willcox no longer have rooms available. Even Down By The River has about half of our rooms taken at this time. So book now if you are considering going to the Wings Over Willcox.
