The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.38 (634 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 145164860X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-02-14 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Phelps Gates said Cutthroat birdwatching. Competitive birdwatching?? Who knew that things could reach that point? But this is a highly entertaining read, even if (like me) you can barely tell the difference between a crow and a cardinal. There's something about the human psyche that looks for challenges that might otherwise seem absurd, just because they are there. Climbing all the 8000-meter peaks. Reaching the highest points of all 50 stat. is about one man's epitome of obsession but so fun to read MGS This book is about one man's epitome of obsession but so fun to read. Love the book!. Enjoyable account of birders going after record USAF Veteran First of all, I'm not a birder. I have no lifelist, no checklists, and I couldn't tell apart sparrows if my life depended on it. And birders are weird. I remember hiking around a forest preserve near Chicago listening to 2 bird nuts arguing about what kind of LBJ's (little brown jobbies) they were looking at. If I would have had a gun, I would have ended their arguments rather quickly by shooting bot
For three men in particular, 1998 would become a grueling battle for a new North American birding record. Every January 1, a quirky crowd storms out across North America for a spectacularly competitive event called a Big Year—a grand, expensive, and occasionally vicious 365-day marathon of birdwatching. This unprecedented year of beat-the-clock adventures ultimately leads one man to a record so gigantic that it is unlikely ever to be bested. Bouncing from coast to coast on frenetic pilgrimages for once-in-a-lifetime rarities, they brave broiling deserts, bug-infested swamps, and some of the lumpiest motel mattresses known to man. Here, prizewinning journalist Mark Obmascik creates a dazzling, fun narrative of the 275,000-mile odyssey of these three obsessives as they fight to win the greatest— or maybe worst—birding cont
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. 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. 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. . 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 this entertaining book, Obmascik, a journalist with the Denver Post, tells the s