The Big Year : A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession

From Publishers Weekly
In one of the wackiest competitions around, every year hundreds of obsessed bird watchers participate in a contest known as the North American Big Year. Hoping to be the one to spot the most species during the course of the year, each birder spends 365 days racing around the continental U.S. and Canada compiling lists of birds, all for the glory of being recognized by the American Birding Association as the Big Year birding champion of North America. In this entertaining book, Obmascik, a journalist with the Denver Post, tells the stories of the three top contenders in the 1998 American Big Year: a wisecracking industrial roofing contractor from New Jersey who aims to break his previous record and win for a second time; a suave corporate chief executive from Colorado; and a 225-pound nuclear power plant software engineer from Maryland. Obmascik bases his story on post-competition interviews but writes so well that it sounds as if he had been there every step of the way. In a freewheeling style that moves around as fast as his subjects, the author follows each of the three birding fanatics as they travel thousands of miles in search of such hard-to-find species as the crested myna, the pink-footed goose and the fork-tailed flycatcher, spending thousands of dollars and braving rain, sleet, snowstorms, swamps, deserts, mosquitoes and garbage dumps in their attempts to outdo each other. By not revealing the outcome until the end of the book, Obmascik keeps the reader guessing in this fun account of a whirlwind pursuit of birding fame. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
In his introduction, newspaperman Mark Obmascik explains how his obsession with birding snuck up on him, starting with a chance phone call about a birding expert. In the same way, his account of The Big Year, the competition of a lifetime for birders, grows on listeners. The 1998 competition was a race between three rivals that led to a new record-745 different species found and identified by the winner. Listeners learn both about the sport and the people who pursue it, even following a budding romance. Oliver Wyman ably conveys Obmascik's love of the sport, making its participants come alive with his storytelling and expressing moments of humor and drama without resorting to caricature. J.A.S. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
There is a well-known competition among birders called the Big Year, in which one abandons one's regular life for one whole year in order to see more species of birds in a geographic area than one's competitors. Environmental journalist Obmascik follows the 1998 Big Year's three main competitors--a New Jersey roofing contractor, a corporate executive, and a software engineer--as they crisscross the country in search of birds. Whether looking for flamingos in the Everglades, great grey owls in the frozen bogs near Duluth, or Asian rarities on the Aleutian island of Attu, these obsessed birders not only faced seasickness, insects, altitude sickness, and going into debt, they also faced each other. Their drive to win propelled all three past the rarified count of 700 species seen, and the winner saw an extraordinary 745 species--a number that will probably never be equaled. With a blend of humor and awe, Obmascik takes the reader into the heart of competitive birding, and in the process turns everyone into birders. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Book News, Inc.
The Big Year is an annual contest in which birders travel all across North America competing to identify as many different species as possible over the course of a 365-day period. Journalist Obmascik profiles three of the participants in the 1998 Big Year, one of whom achieved the unprecedented record of identifying 745 different species, and describes their adventures in traveling the continent looking for rare species. Obmascik frequently incorporates the natural history of the discussed birds into his narrative, also discussing some of the wider societal issues surrounding birds and their environments.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Review
Outside magazine A feathered version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

The Boston Globe Superlative...ebulliently wonderful....The suspense ratchets up, and Obmascik's considerable skill is to make these men so real in their quests, so admirably alive, that in the end who wins the contest is almost beside the point....Because the true subject here is the human spirit -- and all the impossible, incredible, and wondrous things we do and endure for our beloved passions.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A classic in the making -- an account of the biggest year in birdwatching history.

In the USA, some 50 million people lay claim to being bird-watchers or "birders," spending billions of dollars on birding-related travel and membership fees every year. A select, and utterly obsessed, few compete in one of the world's quirkiest contests -- the race to spot the most species in North America in a single year. And 1998 wasn't just a big year. It was the biggest. The Big Year is Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Obmascik's account of what was to become the greatest birding year of all time.

It was freak weather conditions that ensured all previous records were broken, but what becomes clear within the pages of this classic portrait of obsession is that while our feathered friends may be the objective of the Big Year competition, it's the curious activities and behavioural patterns of the pursuing "homo sapiens" that are the real cause for concern. It is a contest that reveals much of the human character in extremes. Such are the author's powers of observation that he brilliantly brings to life and gets under the skin of these extraordinary, eccentric and obsessive birders while empathizing with and eventually succumbing to the all-consuming nature of their obsession. The result is a wonderfully funny, acutely observed classic to rank alongside the best of Bill Bryson.

Mark Obmascik was the lead writer for the Denver Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Columbine High School massacre. He has been writing on strange characters and the environment for many years. He is an avid outdoorsman and recently admitted to his own growing obsession with birds. He lives in Denverwit his wife and two sons.