Clay Taylor of Swarovski Optik NA talks to BirdCallsRadio about digiscoping, butterflies, birding festivals and other bird-related topics. Only a handful of birders have seen over seven hundred birds in North America in a single year. He soon found himself enthralled by master birder Sandy Komito, embodiment of an odd competitive birding subculture. Whenever Levantin glassed the streets on rosy-finch runs, he tried to go with another local birder… “ That’s Al Levantin facing you on the left, Greg Miller front and center, and Sandy Komito. Biking Birder 2020 - A Green Birding UK Year A UK Green birder, birdwatcher, twitcher and environmentalist, Gary Prescott aka The Biking Birder is doing a Green Birding UK year, hoping to raise money for the RSPB and the W&WT (Wildfowl & Wetland Trust) Friday, 11 March 2016. Benton Basham - 710 (1983) 27. spotlighting a fellow birder. The photo below shows three of the members of the “seven hundred club. The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession: Amazon.es: Obmascik, Mark: Libros en idiomas extranjeros My first was in Aspen, Colorado, where I met Al Levantin, an incredible birder and one of the subjects of Mark Obmascik’s classic The Big Year. Their competitive quests are documented in the 2004 non-fiction book, The Big Year, by Pulitzer Prize winning author Mark Obmascik. Levantin’s real-life big year started with watching birds from skis on the Snowmass Ski Area. As regular readers of this blog know, a movie based on the book, starring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson, is scheduled to be released on Oct 14. The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession: Amazon.es: Obmascik, Mark, Wyman, Oliver: Libros en idiomas extranjeros John Spahr - 704 (2010) – Chris Hitt - 704 (2010) *Lower 48 only – Dan Gesualdo - 704 (2018) *Lower 48 only 30. It's described as 'A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obession'. Komito, the holder of the Big Year record number of birds is a wealthy businessman with money to burn, who sets out to break his own record. But for the competitive birder, all four seasons are fair game for finding rare bird species, especially if that birder is doing a Big Year. the Rookie Birder I have watched birds all my life, but after reading "The Big Year," "Grail Bird" and especially Kenn Kaufman's "Kingbird Highway," plus Santa's timely stocking stuffer of "Sibley's 2003 Eastern & Western Field Guides," I made the decision to become a rookie birder … But if Levantin could keep salting his neighborhood with bird feeders, then maybe, just maybe, he could have his own secret stash of one of North America's flittiest birds. The Big Year, by Mark Obmascik, is about three birders; Sandy Kimoto, Al Levantin and Greg Miller, who set out across North America in 1998 to achieve the new big year record. When you spend your career in the confines of a gray suit, the pipits at dawn above timberline are even more wondrous. My talk was for the Linnaean Society of New York’s monthly meeting, and we actually entered the museum in this side entrance on 77 th street, just after the museum’s official closing hours on May 9; all attendees were escorted by a museum guard as we passed by some of the exhibits to the lecture hall. Benton Basham - first to break 700 in a Big Year and one of the original founding members of the ABA back in 1969 At one point, though, I found myself standing next to Al Levantin, who became famous for getting seasick on pelagic trips after his Big Year attempt was chronicled in the book, The Big Year. Greg Miller and Al Levantin (photo of them below) Sandy's record has yet to be broken although many have tried! If you would be interested in sharing a little about yourself and your birding experiences, please send me an email. I could sympathize with this, so when I noticed that his scopolamine patch was incorrectly applied to the skin behind his ear – sticky side out – I thought I should say something. In the end Sandy Komito kept the record, listing 745 birds plus 3 submitted in 1998 and later accepted by state committees for a revised total of 748.