Yellowstone National Park can change a person.

It can also inspire a person to start a bird festival, as it did for conservation filmmaker David Rohm, who first fell in love with the park while shooting his 2022 documentary, “Golden Eagles: Witnesses to a Changing West.”

The visit inspired him to found the Jackson Hole Birding Festival last year through his Wild Excellence Films company.

“We want to give people the same experience we had when we visited Yellowstone,” said Rohm from home in Pittsburgh. “That’s what’s special about the festival, is that we look at the trips from the point of view of someone who’s a visitor and coming for the first time. Ninety percent of people (last year) were first-timers. It’s a powerful experience, that Yellowstone experience. The place changes you in ways you really don’t expect.”

The sophomore festival runs May 27-30 in Jackson, Wyo. Most of the trips are outside of Grand Teton National Park, though a couple are inside the park.

With the Teton Mountains serving as its backdrop, there’s a bigger mission behind the event.

“I’m trying to elevate bird conservation in Jackson and Wyoming, in general,” Rohm said.

The festival’s tagline, “Bird Wild,” acknowledges that it won’t only be birds you’ll stumble upon, but also potentially wild animals.

“You’re looking at a bird, and oh, there’s a bear, or oh, there’s a moose,” Rohm said. “Or you’re looking at a moose, and oh, there are some birds. And the mountains.”

Highlights at this year’s event include a guided tour on Jackson Fork Ranch, where fire-dependent woodpeckers congregate; the trumpeter swan breeding program field tour; searching for long-billed curlews in the National Elk Refuge; and birding in Emily Stevens Park on the Snake River and the National Fish Hatchery.

A $189 registration fee includes many trips, though early registration is recommended. There are also subsidized trips around Jackson with low prices, Rohm says. Go online to jacksonholebirdingfestival.com.

A few Colorado birding festivals:

– March 6-8: Monte Vista Crane Festival; mvcranefest.org

A three-hour drive south to the San Luis Valley, from early February to late March, will bring you face-to-face with more than 20,000 sandhill cranes. The large birds drop by to fatten up on grains, aquatic invertebrates and amphibians, while also enacting their entertaining courting ritual of bowing, chortling and tossing clumps of grass in the air.

Among the cranes will also be many ducks, geese, raptors and owls. The festival offers field trips, talks and workshops.

– May 6-10: Ute Mountain Mesa Verde Birding Festival; utemountainmesaverdebirdingfestival.com

Migratory and resident birds write home about the Four Corners area in southwestern Colorado, where meadows, pastures, fields, orchards, stock ponds and reservoirs create ideal habitats.

The area is frequented by gulls, shorebirds, waterfowl, osprey, Peregrine falcon, bald and golden eagles, woodpeckers, flycatchers, phoebes, American Dipper, towhees, crossbills, bluebirds, tanagers and warblers. Festivalgoers have spotted 180 species through the years.

Hosted by Cortez Cultural Center, festival activities include tours and lectures by wildlife specialists, social hours, a bird-themed art show, and banquet.

– May 14-17: Pikes Peak Birding & Nature Festival; pikespeakbirdingandnaturefestival.org

Bird lovers have spotted 273 species of birds during the last decade of the annual festival, including some rare finds for the Front Range, like a white ibis, summer tanager, Northern saw-whet owl, Canada jay and scissor-tailed flycatcher.

The festival offers dozens of field trips, seminars, workshops and a Birds, Brews and Bites social gathering.