What a perfect gift for anyone who enjoys bird watching, traveling or
taking a year off for a purpose. Noah Strycker was determined to spend
2015 traveling the world and seeing as many wild birds as he could,
hoping to break the 5,000 record. So begins BIRDING WITHOUT BORDERS , which demonstrates
that the pastime of birding is indeed without borders.
In Antarctica, Noah, boat cruise bird guide and associate editor of
Birding magazine, hoped to start his year with a penguin but met a
Cape Petrel first. The intrepid traveler next hit up South America's
indigenous wildlife. The preparations he made might seem scanty, but
worked: bird spotters and researchers went out of their way to find and
assist him. They put him up in their homes, drove him around and hiked
up the Andes. Noah says that the internet has spread knowledge of and
communication about birds, as he can now search on websites and the
eBird app, rather than trying to find a written record somewhere. By the
seventeenth day, Noah had spotted 300 species, due to the aid of
locals who knew where to go.
Travel wasn't always easy, despite extensive prearrangements and
carbon offsets. Noah spent over $2,000 on visas and had more
thousands in advance bookings stolen by fraud. He digresses to explain
the history of birding and life lists or year lists, rewarding niche tourism
industries with canopy walks and providing even more justification for
keeping natural habitats pristine and un-logged or un-drained. Noah
warns that developing countries have dangerous roads, causing
deaths; among them Phoebe Snetsinger, the first person to see 8,000
bird species, who was killed in a road accident in Madagascar in 1999.
Birders have been shot, abducted, caught diseases or, in happier
cases, found lifelong partners.
My favourite scenes include the slog and wait to hope for a harpy eagle
in Brazil. I recently read The Man Who Climbs Trees by James Aldred,
who had to ascend to a harpy nest hundreds of feet in the air. But the
manic chase around Peru to see the Black-Spectacled Brushfinch in a
high altitude cloud forest and the Golden-Backed Mountain Tanager
holds its own dramas and kindnesses. Best of all, though, has to be
meeting a woodcutter who makes far more money from bird tourism
than he could have dreamed, just because he stopped felling trees and
started feeding birds.
Dawn birds and night birds, hummingbirds and emus; forty-one
countries and exhaustion illness. Blogging progress and photos daily,
making new friends, learning that a rival was hoping for the same goal.
BIRDING WITHOUT BORDERS by
Noah Strycker is remarkable, fun and hopeful. I'd love to do it, but
perhaps not at that speed. For those who would like to see them, a
gear list and species list are at the end.
Traveling to 41 countries in 2015 with a backpack and
binoculars, Noah Strycker became the first person to see
more than half the world’s 10,000 species of birds in one
year.
In 2015, Noah Strycker set himself a lofty
goal: to become the first person to see half the world’s
birds in one year. For 365 days, with a backpack,
binoculars, and a series of one-way tickets, he traveled
across forty-one countries and all seven continents,
eventually spotting 6,042 species—by far the biggest birding
year on record.
This is no travelogue or glorified
checklist. Noah ventures deep into a world of blood-sucking
leeches, chronic sleep deprivation, airline snafus,
breakdowns, mudslides, floods, war zones, ecologic
devastation, conservation triumphs, common and iconic
species, and scores of passionate bird lovers around the
globe. By pursuing the freest creatures on the planet, Noah
gains a unique perspective on the world they share with
us—and offers a hopeful message that even as many birds face
an uncertain future, more people than ever are working to
protect them.
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