Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World by Noah StryckerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
What a great book - combining my interests in birding and travel, and bringing to life the author's year-long effort to see half the world's bird species (or more). The fact that Noah Strycker hails from Western Oregon doesn't hurt either, and his connections with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are great for me, too. Here's a brief passage that mentions both, as well as leading to the trade-off between his objectives and those of the typical birder: "After leaving home in Oregon, not to return until this year was over, I’d landed in Ithaca to meet Tim Lenz, a full-time programmer for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website, eBird, which I was using to track my sightings for the year. Tim spends his free time birding his brains out and knew where to find the species I sought in New York, partly because he’d catalogued them all in eBird. He was wiry, precise, and about the same age as me. The two of us were near Cayuga Lake, looking for common birds such as Upland Sandpipers and American Black Ducks, when Tim received a WhatsApp message on his phone. 'Wow,' he said, suddenly at full attention. 'It looks like someone just reported a Brown Pelican flying over the lake. That’s, like, the first inland record for New York! We’ve got to go see that bird!'"
I was taking my time with this book for awhile, a "slow read" that is so interesting and well-written that it was not a book I wanted to zoom through. But after returning the borrowed hardcover, and buying my own ebook version, it was time to make some time. Here's another example to end with, this time of his advice from near the end of the book that I just love: "Know that the world is much friendlier than it often seems, and don’t be paranoid. Eat the street food—it’s tasty, cheap, and healthy—and talk with the vendors. If a problem can be resolved for $20, spend it and move on."
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