But you’re also bound to experience what in the book industry is, perhaps euphemistically, called “travel adventure”. If you bird hard for a year, it’s a given that you’ll see plenty of great birds and fantastic places. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I can get back to what makes big year books so great.
Then there’s this seemingly innocuous sentence: “Our birding month in Australia had started peacefully enough.” Birding month? In Australia? Ok, I know they were going all out for an entire year, but when phrased like that it’s like a punch in the gut to one who’s thrilled with the occasional birding weekend. On day 19, the biggest twitchers had seen almost exactly the same number of birds as I have after 8+ years of birding. Yes, there is a dark side to big year books, especially The Biggest Twitch. And if I don’t get to Kruger National Park, Manu, or one of the other fabulous locations in this book, reading about them is better than nothing.Įxcept for the jealousy. I hope, one day, to go to many of the places our intrepid couple visited in the course of The Biggest Twitch, so this feels like a teaser for what’s to come. Alan and Ruth’s thrill at encountering a Resplendent Quetzal or Harpy Eagle is palpable, and I feel it too. But when I read about it, I’m transported. Due to a variety of reasons, I can’t do any big year right now, much less a global one. So what makes big year books so compelling to birders? For me, the main thing is the vicarious birding that it allows. Over a dozen countries and thousands of birds later, they….well, I’m not going to spoil it for you. In order to do so, they quit their jobs, sold their house, and spent all their money (plus some) on a crazy amount of travel. In 2008, Alan Davies and Ruth Miller set out to see as many birds as possible, with the specific goal of breaking the existing record of 3,662 species, set by Jim Clements in 1989. Where was a book about a big year spanning the entire world? Enter The Biggest Twitch. But among all the big year books I’ve read, there has been a glaring omission. Indeed, I’ve reviewed books detailing big years in a single state ( Chasing Birds Across Texas), the ABA area ( Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year), a continent ( The Big Twitch), and even for a particular family of birds ( The Jewel Hunter). A birding big year can be done in many different ways and confined to any number of geographic boundaries. I love reading “big year” books – accounts of people trying to see as many birds as possible in a single year.
0 kommentar(er)
