World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD) was initiated in 2006 and is an annual awareness-raising campaign highlighting the need for the conservation of migratory birds and their habitats. 2018 was an important transition year in the history of WMBD – unifying the planet’s major migratory bird corridors, or flyways: the African-Eurasian flyway, the East Asian-Australasian flyway, and the Americas flyways. Celebrated from now on twice a year, on the Second Saturday in May and in October, WMBD aims to reach out to a broader audience and amplify its message for bird conservation.

Every year people around the world take action and organize public events such as bird festivals, education programmes, exhibitions and bird-watching excursions to celebrate WMBD. All these activities can also be undertaken at any time on the year because that countries or regions observing the peak of migrations at different times, but the main days for the international celebrations in 2019 are Saturday 11 May and Saturday 12 October.

The theme for WMBD 2018, which also took place in the “Year of the Bird”, was “Unifying our Voices for Bird Conservation” and focused clearly and strongly on the development of its new identity and the need for people celebrating WMBD around the world to communicate and learn from each other, across borders, within and between the world’s flyways.