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Summary
Summary
Every year on January 1, a quirky crowd of adventurers storms out across North America for a spectacularly competitive event called a Big Year -- a grand, grueling, expensive, and occasionally vicious, "extreme" 365-day marathon of birdwatching.For three men in particular, 1998 would be a whirlwind, a winner-takes-nothing battle for a new North American birding record. In frenetic pilgrimages for once-in-a-lifetime rarities that can make or break their lead, the birders race each other from Del Rio, Texas, in search of the rufous-capped warbler, to Gibsons, British Columbia, on a quest for Xantus's hummingbird, to Cape May, New Jersey, seeking the offshore great skua. Bouncing from coast to coast on their potholed road to glory, they brave broiling deserts, roiling oceans, bug-infested swamps, a charge by a disgruntled mountain lion, and some of the lumpiest motel mattresses known to man.The unprecedented year of beat-the-clock adventures ultimately leads one man to a new record -- one so gigantic that it is unlikely ever to be bested...finding and identifying an extraordinary 745 different species by official year-end count. Prize-winning journalist Mark Obmascik creates a rollicking, dazzling narrative of the 275,000-mile odyssey of these three obsessives as they fight to the finish to claim the title in the greatest -- or maybe the worst -- birding contest of all time. With an engaging, unflappably wry humor, Obmascik memorializes their wild and crazy exploits and, along the way, interweaves an entertaining smattering of science about birds and their own strange behavior with a brief history of other bird-men and -women; turns out even Audubon pushed himself beyond the brink when he was chasing and painting the birds of America. A captivating tour of human and avian nature, passion and paranoia, honor and deceit, fear and loathing, The Big Year shows the lengths to which people will go to pursue their dreams, to conquer and categorize -- no matter how low the stakes. This is a lark of a read for anyone with birds on the brain -- or not.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Bemused appreciation from Denver Post reporter Obmascik of a year-long quest to eyeball or hear as many bird breeds as possible in the US and Canada. The Big Year was 1998, the protagonists were Sandy Komito, a roofing contractor from New Jersey; Al Levantin, a well-heeled businessman; and Greg Miller, a software jock for a nuclear power plant. As enjoyably chronicled by Obmascik, all three went to punishing lengths to tally the highest number of bird species encountered for the year. It was a bit like The Great Race, except that here there would be no fraud or deceit: witnesses would be good, photos even better, but trust was imperative; there would even be instances of "honor among top birders: if one asked for help, the other provided it." Pocketbooks would be stretched, as would the limits of physical endurance, in mad dashes for vagrants, accidentals, and true freaks made public by rare-bird alerts. Sometimes a good sighting was just a matter of being in the right place, or of reaping the bounty served by El NiÑo, and chasing birds via air travel was certainly easier in those pre-9/11 days. The author, a bit of a birder himself, knows how to wring joy out of this birding bender; he vividly conveys the delight in identifying a white-throated robin, a clay-colored robin, a rufous-backed robin, a chachalacas ("that sounded as if Ethel Merman had swallowed a rusty trombone"), a yellow rail ("the Greta Garbo of the bird world"), or "the green microburst of energy called Xantus's hummingbird." Obmascik will light a tinderbox of bird lust in unsuspecting readers who have never given a thought to "Le Conte's thrasher, a notoriously elusive soil-digger of the saltbush desert." You'll gladly add this one to your own list--of surprisingly good books. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
