Book Review: Extreme Birder

by Greg Neise on May 3, 2011

In 2008, Lynn Barber entered the rarified air of North American birders that have seen more than 700 species in one year. After reading Mark Obmascik’s blockbuster, The Big Year, I was eagerly awaiting Barber’s account of her own Big Year. Doing an ABA Big Year has been a fantasy of mine, and having done a couple of state Big Years in Illinois, I could identify with the challenge.

Like many people, I hadn’t followed her Big Year as it unfolded, and even though I knew of it, I didn’t know the details. Like how many birds she finished with. Doing any kind of “big” anything in birding is usually a methodical attempt to hit all the notes, dot every i and cross every t. It’s at the end that it gets crazy. When you reach the 3/4-point, assess where you’re at…and realize you have much farther to go that you’d thought. That’s when things get tense. That’s when you try crazy things. That’s when the great stories happen. Will you reach your goal? Will you set a new record?

I was disappointed, then, that Barber gave me the end of the story in the third sentence of the preface. By the end of the second paragraph, I knew how everything had shaken out, and how she had stacked up to the competition. By the end of the preface her Big Year effort had been neatly summarized, including the “realistic” goal, the “dream” goal, when she reached the dream goal, and of course, how she finished.

I felt let down. I hadn’t read the first page of the actual story, but I knew what the milestones were and when they would happen.

The preface also contains some more info about Big Years: a brief history, a bit about her 2005 Texas Big Year, explanation of ABA codes and some factual background on the author.

The meat and potatoes of Barber’s book is an almost daily diary of 272 days in the field.

At the beginning of each chapter is a summary including the number of new birds seen that month, where her total was at by the end of the month and where she traveled to. The “traveled to” part by itself would have been a nice teaser; some months, like August, included birding in Florida, Alaska, Utah, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona. I think it would have been more exciting if the monthly progress summaries were saved for the end of each chapter.

Having said all that, I have to report that I enjoyed reading it.

Barber chronicles the long slog of planning trips, watching a budget, somehow keeping a business going and maintaining a marriage, while birding basically every day for a year. She offers honest accounts of her weeks and days, with failed attempts given as much space as successful ones. I found myself wanting to yell at her through the book sometimes, like when she got lost twice while looking for one particular bird in Arizona. I wanted to scream, “don’t give up!!! Get that damn bird!” She did, eventually, get the damn bird.

Lynn Barber approached her Big Year in a very businesslike manner. She didn’t zoom around in a helicopter, get stuck in the mud or get to stare down a mountain lion. But she did drive like a long-haul trucker, drag herself and camping gear up and down mountains, and despite an almost paralyzing fear of drowning, rafted through class 3 rapids in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Yet, the journal entries leave a lot to be read between the lines. The physical and emotional stress of the endeavor is hinted at, but you have to read the poems that are interspersed throughout to know how she’s doing upstairs. In February, for instance:

The plane drones on through clouds of gray,
My mind is blank and far away.
A bit of thumping brings it back,
And then it’s on another tack.
We’re headed north to cloud and snow;
I’m not sure that I want to go.
This big year thing has got me tired;
My motivation’s ’bout expired.

I also very much enjoyed the many photographs Barber took, and especially the paintings that she made of the birds she saw (her beautiful painting of a pair of Spotted Owls graces the cover).

Anyone who’s ever chased rare birds or dreamed of doing a Big Year (of any flavor), will identify with Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year. If you’ve read The Big Year, and thought “that sounds like fun!”…read Extreme Birder to find out what completing an ABA Big Year is really like.