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About the Author

Kenn Kaufman is a legend among birders. At sixteen he hitchhiked back & forth across North America, traveling eighty thousand miles in a year, simply to see as many birds as he could; he came back to tell the story in "Kingbird Highway." A field editor for "Audubon" & a regular contributor to every show more major birding magazine, he is the youngest person ever to receive the Ludlow Griscom Award, the highest honor of the American Birding Association. His books include "Lives of North American Birds" & the "Peterson Field Guide to Advanced Birding." He lives in Tucson, Arizona. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Includes the names: Kenn Kaufman, Kenn Kaufmann

Image credit: via Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Series

Works by Kenn Kaufman

Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America (2003) — Series Editor — 275 copies
Mammals of North America (2004) 90 copies

Associated Works

Pocket Guide to Familiar Birds: Eastern Region (1987) — Consultant — 268 copies

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Common Knowledge

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Reviews

My third time reading this. Fun, light, well-written but it didn't really excite me this time.

But I did learn more about the history of the American Birding Association and how print media played a huge role in expanding the Big Year/hyper-listing phenomenon.
 
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monicaberger | 10 other reviews | Jan 22, 2024 |
Kenn successfully completes an item many experienced birders have high on their bucket lists and he does it on his own hitchhiking as a teenager with a miniscule budget. Nostalgic and inspiring and fun to read--a sure bet for any twitcher.
 
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dele2451 | 10 other reviews | May 16, 2022 |
At first, I wasn't too excited about the illustrations, they seemed a bit crude and few in number. But the species descriptions are excellent. Also, an excellent selection of species on each page of plates, each with a catchy heading.
½
 
Flagged
Sandydog1 | 2 other reviews | Sep 22, 2021 |
I think that Strycker's big year bird list book, "Birding Without Borders," is much more interesting for a general reader, since Strycker interleaves vignettes from his trip with information about birds and birding. Kaufman's book is focused on the trip, except for a bit of romance and youthful angst. You can't help but learn something about birds and birding, and it is hard to resist looking up the species to learn more, but that's not a big focus. It is also an impressive story, hitchhiking across the country for a year to find birds. For a birder, at least, this is still a fun read.

> the Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of the American Ornithologists’ Union. This group publishes the AOU Check-list of North American Birds … We were all happily using the 1957 list, and subconsciously we had come to regard it as permanent. But not anymore. Birders were now talking about the “great April massacre of 1973.” Since we counted only full species in our listing games, the action of the AOU had lowered everyone’s lists.

> The Myrtle Warbler had been lumped with the western Audubon’s Warbler under the uninspiring name of Yellow-rumped Warbler. Baltimore and Bullock’s orioles had been merged into Northern Oriole … Perhaps now the Cape Sable Sparrow would fall from the birders’ field of view and skulk back into the oblivion from which it had arisen in 1918. Whether it would count for my 1973 year list was unclear. The American Birding Association had no rules dealing with taxonomic changes made in midyear.

> Under the classification used then, the world’s total bird list was considered to be 8,600 species, and Stuart Keith had become the first person ever to see 4,300 of those in the wild

> We had scored 203 on that run, the first “official” 200-plus Big Day in Texas. But that was nowhere near the North American record of 227, set by Guy McCaskie’s team in California the year before.

> This phenomenon—of rare birds attracting more birders, who then find more rare birds, attracting more birders, and so on—was soon given a name: “The Patagonia Picnic Table Effect.”

> No prospects. That was true, wasn’t it? I was working so hard on my year list this year, but what was it going to bring me in the real world? Nothing. Even if I won the year-list “contest,” at year’s end I would still be an unemployed high-school dropout with no prospects for the future.

> I had broken the year-list record in late July, and now I was up to 630. Hardly forty species remained that I could reasonably hope to find before the year ended. But the five months ahead might not be enough time to find them all; those forty species were scattered all over the continent, mostly uncommon birds in out-of-the-way places.

> In short, Axtell’s conclusion was that this mystery shorebird, with its blackish feathers, odd-colored legs, and strange behavior, was merely a yellowlegs that had gotten into some oil. Standing there reading and rereading this bombshell, I was in shock. … the general conclusion was that Harold Axtell had been right and that all the dozens of other birders had been wrong. This episode had a profound impact on me—partly because I’d spent five days hitching in the rain, 2,500 miles out of my way.

> birders had accepted the American Ornithologists’ Union definition of “North America” as consisting of Canada, the United States, and three other nearby areas with similar birdlife: Greenland, Bermuda, and the peninsula of Baja California.

> Just because I had broken listing records, they expected me to be a top-notch birder—and I was not. They were comparing me to Ted Parker, who had set the record just two years before—but there was really no comparison.

> The totals amassed by Murdoch and me would be edged out in 1976, as a young ornithology student named Scott Robinson made a low-budget, high-knowledge run around the continent. But that would be the last time that any record could be set by a birder who focused on the normally occurring birds. … Floyd Murdoch won: in the region that would become the official checklist area of the American Birding Association, he tallied 669 species, three more than I. However, many birders in 1973 were still using the old checklist area of the American Ornithologists’ Union, which included Baja California; my five Baja birds brought my list up to 671.
… (more)
 
Flagged
breic | 10 other reviews | Apr 7, 2021 |

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Works
24
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Rating
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ISBNs
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