Book description
Each year, hundreds of people set out across North America determined
to set a new record in a spectacularly competitive event. Is it
tennis? Golf? Racing? Poker perhaps? No, it's bird-watching, and a
contest known as the Big Year - a grand, gruelling, expensive (and
occasionally vicious) 365-day marathon to identify the most species.
THE BIG YEAR is the rollicking chronicle of the 275,000-mile odyssey
of three unlikely adventurers who take their bird-watching so
seriously it nearly kills them. From Texas in pursuit of the
Rufus-capped Warbler to British Columbia in search of Xantus'
Hummingbird, these obsessive enthusiasts brave roasting deserts,
storm-tossed oceans, infested swamps and disgruntled lions (not to
mention some of the lumpiest hotel mattresses known to man) as they
vie to become North America's number one bird-watcher in what would
prove to be the biggest Big Year of them all...
This captivating tour of human and avian nature, of courage and
deceit, of passion and paranoia reveals the extremes to which Man will
go to pursue his dreams, to conquer and to categorize...
Mark Obmascik has been a journalist for over two decades, most
recently at the 'Denver Post', where he was lead writer for the
newspaper's Pulitzer Prize. He has also won the National Press Club
Award for his environmental journalism. An obsessed birdwatcher himself,
he lives in Denver with his wife and sons.
