Birder’s Bookshelf
By Michele T. Logarta
While field guides are essential to birding, there are many other tomes of interest to the bird watching bookworm. This section features those other books, fiction and nonfiction, about birds, birders, nature, and the environment. For this issue of eBON, I chose the book “Birding without Borders” by Noah Strycker.
Birding without Borders
An Obsession, A Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World
By Noah Strycker
Published by Mariner Books
2018
Non Fiction
Noah Strycker’s quest to see 5,000 birds in 2015 was undoubtedly an epic journey. He called his Big Year “an obsession and a quest” to become the first person to see half of the world’s bird species. As he traveled the world, ticking off birds on his list, he had many epiphanies and moments of introspection. These he shared in his book, which was also a very entertaining and informative read.
Noah listed his 5,000th bird in the Philippines—the Mindanao endemic Flame-crowned Flowerpecker—in Cinchona Forest, Bukidnon province.
I cannot imagine what Noah felt like the moment he did.
This is what he said: “For me, accomplishing this personal objective was the sweetest feeling, better even than passing the world record in India. The number of birds matters less than the satisfaction of achieving what I had set out to do—a task that ten months ago had seemed almost too overwhelming to contemplate.”
Noah nailed the world record when he saw a pair of Sri Lanka Frogmouths in India, prior to his visit to the Philippines. The Frogmouths were his 4,342nd bird—the ones that gave him the new world record at the time.
Recently, I was part of the celebration of my friend’s 1,000th bird. It was a Yellow-breasted Boatbill we had seen in Indonesia. Five of us in the group rustled up a surprise dinner party. We wore folded paper boats on our heads or wherever we could hang them on our bodies, and we ordered a banana split for our friend. Banana, because it is shaped like a boat, and the entire ice cream concoction is served in a boat-shaped dish. We gave congratulatory speeches to fete our friend’s victory.
But I wonder, did she feel like Noah?
Birding is like that—filled with moments of exhilaration and joy, but also disappointment and sadness.
Sometimes, it happens that you dip on a bird, or not everyone in the group of birders sees the bird that’s been spotted. It is always ideal that everyone gets to see it, but fate is fate. That’s life. I like to console myself that there’ll be a next time, but again, there may not be.
There are times when we are struck by sadness and anger too, when we see how we humans have treated Mother Nature.
While Noah was in Mindanao, he had hoped to see the Philippine Eagle. He and his Filipino guides did see a raptor in the very far distance. Experience and instinct told them it was the Philippine Eagle, but they could not be absolutely certain.
He wrote: “My heart ached. I wished, as I had so often lately, for more time. When I closed my eyes, I knew that I would always remember exactly how empty it felt, that day on Mindanao Island, not to see a great Philippine Eagle.”
To be honest, if someone asked me how many birds I’ve ticked off, I wouldn’t be able to spit out the answer instantly. I’d have to pull up eBird and check. So I was struck by Noah’s statement that, in birding, “size doesn’t really matter… That is, the length of a life list does not necessarily measure the caliber of its author… There is no such thing as the greatest birder in the world—and it probably wouldn’t be the guy with the most notches on his binocs, me included.”
For Noah, the best birder in a group of high listers would be no one else but the guide, who has probably spent an entire lifetime studying the birds of his country.
Citing an experience with such a group of high listers, Noah recalls asking them about a certain species, and they could not recall “without checking a spreadsheet.”
But Noah is the last person to dismiss the value of a bird list. After all, he himself was on a quest to list 5,000 birds. By the end of his Big Year, Noah had gone beyond his target and listed 6,042 birds.
For someone like me, who will always prefer someone else to do the eBird list while I focus on looking at birds, I wouldn’t call myself a true lister. So, I really like Noah’s definition of a lifelist.
Here it is:
“So what does a list measure, if not expertise or talent? Some argue that a list is only a metric of the depth of one’s pockets and the free time to empty them. Those critics have a point, but I think a list is grander than that: besides reflecting how many places a person has traveled, it measures the desire to see those places and those birds firsthand. A list, in other words, is a personal account of dreams and memories. It conveys poetry, passion, and inspiration.”
With Noah’s words in mind, I may not know the exact number of birds I have on my list, but I know what dreams and memories are in there. I’m pretty sure my fellow birders do too!