What we talk about when we talk about a “Big Year”
Lately, I have been planning for my 2026 ABA Big Year nearly every day. The prospect of seeing most of the birds in the USA (and maybe parts of Canada) has become an obsession. I have scheduled my (prospective) trips through at least July. I feel like an impatient child in the backseat on a long road trip, giddy with excitement and incessantly asking “Is it time to start yet?”
The best part of a trip often lies in the preparation and research. This “armchair travel” brings countless images of places visited, birds seen, roads traversed. I experience the same feeling when reading a great travel or adventure book by Halliburton, Cherry-Garrard, Peterson & Fisher, and Kaufman. Life’s short, go travel!
In dreaming about a Big Year, I find myself lost in thought, but after another long day of crafting monthly itineraries, I take a step back and wonder what I’m doing.
Why do I want to do this whole “Big Year” thing, anyway? What is compelling me to spend money on planes, (one or two) trains, and automobiles to find birds? Wouldn’t it be the same to see them over the rest of my lifetime rather than during a calendar year?
Why the rush?
Why birds?
When I read books about Big Years, the birds are the primary focus. Travel here, see bird A. Travel there, see bird B. Except for a few exceptions, such as “Birding Beyond Birders” and “The (Big) Year that Flew by”, many have been written with a secondary intention. One author took it upon himself to go birding in the wake of several hardships. Another rode his bike across the country as a personal challenge and redemption following years of addiction and alcoholism.
If each of these birders, when setting out for a Big Years had the dual missions of seeing as many birds as possible and finding themselves, what are my goals?
My first goal is to see, observe, and document those birds that occur yearly in the ABA area, including Hawaii. I have neither the time nor the money to travel at the drop of a hat to see a Code 5 [insert bird name] on the other side of the continent. My interest would be to see those birds which are native, or at least not exotic or descended from escapees or released populations.
Apart from birds, I want to see the “Wild America” that Peterson and Fisher sought in their journey in the 1950s. I have travelled internationally the last couple of years, but there are still places here in North America I haven’t seen. Next year, except for a trip to the South Pacific to visit Hawaii and American Samoa I want to stay primarily on the continent and explore what this land mass has to offer. This includes visiting National Parks and other sites within the National Park Service, as well as traveling to almost all of the United States. My hope is that any one who reads my blog will feel inspired to do the same, or at least visiting and support one or two National Parks in the near future.
On a more personal level, I want to challenge myself with this immense journey. All of those travel and adventure books have truly influenced me, not unlike the impact those books on chivalry had on Don Quixote. Any sort of travel or journey is a departure from the ordinariness of the “every day”.
I feel, well, kind of locked in. I like my job, have a loving household, and enjoy an overall nice life. There is that lingering feeling, though, that there is something more I can do.
I’ve noticed that birding, despite the recent appeal to persons of all ages, had become an activity for either the young (those under 30) or the old (usually retirees.) Those in the middle are really caught in the middle. Perhaps this is an oversimplification, but that impression has confronted me. I want to break that mould and try, within reason, something crazy, something unexpected, something wild.
Birds, travel, wildness—those are my objectives.
