Wilson's Warbler
Big Year \big yi(ə)r\ noun 1. a birder’s quest to identify as many species of North American birds as possible during one year 2. a quest to focus on conservation issues affecting North American birds, while birding for a year without using fossil fuels for transportation, hence “Bird Year”.
A Big Year is a dedicated search for as many bird species as possible within North America (excluding Mexico) during a calendar year. A Big Day is a similar 24 hour search.
Our Bird Year doesn't meet the criteria for a Big Year. We will be birding for an year, but it won’t be a calendar year because of Malkolm’s school schedule. Our Bird Year will be from June ’07 to June ’08 (which is a “big” year in the leap year sense – 366 days!)
Mark Obmascik, author of The Big Year, said that birders “turn into maniacs” when they set out on a Big Year. Pulitzer Prize nominee Scott Weidensaul wrote that “the Big Year idea has snowballed among birders into the most zealous, highly competitive permutation of the hobby,” and noted that it “seems to be largely a testosterone-driven obsession.”
Our Bird Year will be as “maniacal” as any previous Big Years – we will travel without using fossil fuels. We’ll explore by bicycle, canoe, kayak, sailboat and the well-worn soles of our boots. We won’t set any records, except for sore muscles and tire repairs.
No one knows the first time someone kept a list of the birds they identified during a year – maybe petroglyphs in some cave record the first Big Year. In 1939, Guy Emerson, a banker from New York decided to base his travels on birding rather than business. By the end of the year, he had identified 497 North American species. Emerson’s record lasted until 1953 when the legendary Roger Tory Peterson set out to search for “Wild America” (and along the way to “do things up brown and try for a record”). His 572 birds launched the competitive side of Big Year birding. These competitions have reached ludicrous heights in recent years.
Big Years reflect the personalities/obsessive natures of each participant. When well-known birder and author Kenn Kaufman was a teenager, he set out on his own Big Year. He hitch-hiked back and forth across the continent, sleeping in ditches and eating dog-food so he wouldn’t blow his shoe-string budget. James Vardaman wasn’t deterred by his lack of birding experience, he simply hired experts to guide him to his 1979 record of 699 birds. Sandy Komito, set the current record in 1998 with an astonishing 745 birds. He chased rarities with a zealot’s fervor, jetting more than 100,000 miles and shelling out more than $60,000.
No one who spends an entire year chasing birds will come away unchanged. As well as the memories however, we hope to leave something positive behind for the birds. Our year will be dedicated to bird conservation.