Big year
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Big Year is an informal competition among North American birders to see who can see or hear the largest number of species of birds within a single calendar year and within a specific geographical area. A big year may be done within a single US state, or Canadian province, within the lower 48 continental U.S. states, or within the American Birding Association area (i.e. the 49 continental U.S. states (including Alaska), Canada and the French islands St. Pierre and Miquelon, plus surrounding waters and islands).
[edit] History
In 1953, Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher, took a 30,000 mile road trip visiting the wild places of North America. In 1955, they told the story of their travels in a book and a documentary film, both called Wild America. In one of the footnotes to the book Peterson said "My year's list at the end of 1953 was 572 species." The big year had been born. In 1956 the bar was raised when a twenty-five year old Englishman named Stuart Keith, following Peterson and Fisher's route, compiled a list of 598 species.
Keith's record stood for 15 years. In 1971 eighteen year old Ted Parker, in his last semester of high school in southeastern Pennsylvania, birded the eastern seaboard of North America extensively. That September, Parker enrolled in the University of Arizona in Tucson and found dozens of Southwestern U.S. and Pacific coast specialities. He ended the year with a list of 626 species. (Before his death in 1993, Parker went on to become one of the world's most renowned field ornithologists, and the acknowledged leading expert on the birds of the American tropics.)
The big year of 1998 was the subject of a popular book of the same name by Mark Obmascik. In that year three different birders, Sandy Komito, Al Levantin and Greg Miller, chased the record of 721 birds, held by Komito. In the end Sandy Komito kept his record, listing an astonishing 745 birds, a record many in the birding community believe might never be broken. The reason they believe this is because during that year, one of the strongest El Niño years on record caused many lost rare birds to come to North America. North America itself has only about 675 native species.
[edit] Published big year books
- Wild America (1955) by Roger Tory Peterson
- Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession That Got a Little Out of Hand (1997) by Kenn Kaufman
- I Came, I Saw, I Counted (1999) by Sandy Komito
- Chasing Birds Across Texas: A Birding Big Year (2003) by Mark T. Adams
- The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession (2004) by Mark Obmascik
- Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul (2005) by Scott Weidensaul
