Birding Without Borders An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

World year listing is not entirely new as a challenge, although it has become more competitive in recent years. In 1968 Peter Alden became the first person to see over 2000 species in a year. That was back in the days of relatively expensive air travel and at a time when information on world birding opportunities was sparse. Move forward two decades and in 1989 James Clements managed to see 3662 species. Then in 2008 Alan Davies and Ruth Miller to set another new record and passed 4000 species. In fact, they saw 4341 species – an amazing feat. But no matter how keen you are, there is nearly always someone who is keener still, and in 2015 Noah Strycker set himself another goal: to become the first person to see half the world's birds in one year. His haul of 6042 species and how he managed to see them is the subject of this book.

Noah started his year already positioned at the bottom of the globe in Antarctica, and over the next twelve months he birded almost every day, carrying just hand-luggage and a series of one-way airline tickets. His journey took him across all seven continents and 41 countries – although not the UK!

Helpfully, the book includes a map to show his route and it makes for fascinating reading. Having seen 53 species on his cruise north to Argentina he then travelled across eleven countries in South and Central America until early May. This strategy allowed him to add almost 2500 species to his total. To give you an idea of his work rate, Noah was adding around 20-30 new species per day and seeing amazing totals in each country – such as 784 in Peru, 749 in Colombia and 684 in Brazil.

From here he moved to his home country – the USA. Interestingly he simply visited Texas, Arizona, California, Oregon and New York. In just 21 days he added 215 new species before heading towards Europe where he spent only 16 days and added 314 species in Iceland, Norway, Turkey, Spain and Germany. Bizarrely he only added one species in Germany – Egyptian Goose Alopochen aegyptiaca! – before travelling to Africa for almost three months. On leaving Uganda for the Middle East and Asia in early September Noah had added over 1100 species and was now on a total of 4204 and just days away from drawing level with Alan and Ruth’s record. In India (on the first of two visits) Noah added 409 species before continuing across Myanmar, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. The final part of his tour from late November sees him in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and back into India. Even on New Year’s Eve he added eleven new species.

As a keen world birder myself, I was fascinated by the route. Naturally, I would have probably have included the UK in my itinerary, but why bother when Noah saw almost every bird on the British List elsewhere? Interestingly he never caught up with Grey Partridge Perdix perdix, Eurasian Bittern Botaurus stellaris, Jack Snipe Lymnocryptes minimus or Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata. Among the places he did not visit I would have added Ethiopia – but I cannot fault his planning.

I really enjoyed reading this book and found Noah’s style to be engaging and fun. I think he’d make a great birding companion. Not wanting to spoil the story I won’t reveal some of the things that he encountered. Above all I found myself impressed by his determination to keep going – and that he carried all his kit in a very well packed rucksack.

As a postscript, as Noah ended his year on 6042 species Dutch birder Arjan Dwarshuis was just setting out to try and see 7000 species in a year. He managed to find 6833 and set yet another new record. Arjan followed IOC taxonomy which has a larger number of species. Had he followed IOC (as opposed to the Clements List) Noah would have seen 6153 species – still almost 700 species short of Arjan’s total. The magic 7000 will be broken before too long. In case you are contemplating the challenge, it is worth noting that Noah was 28 when he started on his big year and Arjan was 30. Maybe I’ll stick with day listing!