I was honored to speak to Noah Strycker just days after he completed his mind-boggling, death-defying, exhaustifying, electrifying, jealousitizing World Big Year, and summed it up for Slate.
Completing a Big Year is every birders dream. Fame! Adventure! Blog posts! The entirety of the American birding community watched with jealous anticipation as Neil Hayward took the ABA Big Year crown last year, and we all imagined what it would have been like if it were us instead.
Aside from the obvious financial and time-commitment obstacles to taking on a Big Year (seriously I don't know how anyone can do it), there's the equally-daunting shadow of not setting the record. Can you imagine putting forth all that time and money and then finishing, like, 12th? Yeah yeah experiences and all that, but it's hard!
As we've seen in the immense interest in the cool Biking for Birds Big Year, other versions of this tradition can also be fun. One of my favorite ideas is something I read about in The Big Year Book, where some guy was sick (or old?) and bedridden for a long period, and he did a Big Year based on all the species he saw on TV. I love that idea, and kinda can't wait to be a worthless old piece of crap so I can sit on my couch but tell my grandkids to leave me alone because I'm working on something important.
So when the ABA record is too much to chase after, here are some ideas for different kinds of big years.
Place-named Species Big Year
OK, by my very brief count there are 45 or so birds found the ABA named after geographic locations in the ABA area. Tennessee warbler, Savannah sparrow, California towhee, etc. The challenge of this Big Year is to see as many of these species as you can in the place they are named for. You get it? You've got to see a Mississippi Kite in the state of Mississippi, then scoot down to Louisiana to see a Louisiana waterthrush.
The first tricky part would be figuring out the ground rules. In the above-mentioned 45-ish species I counted birds you'd just need to see in "America": American white pelican, American oystercatcher. I also counted Pacific loon and Atlantic puffin, figuring that they're named after those oceans. I didn't include "eastern," "western," "northern" and "southern" birds, even though they're still named after parts of the US - just relative places not specific ones. But if someone were taking on this Big Year I wouldn't hold it against them if they wanted to count the sighting of a western kingbird in California or a northern cardinal in Pennsylvania. Some agreement of what to consider "west" and "north" would be needed.
I also didn't count birds named after pieces of their habitat - boreal chickadee or cactus wren - though if someone wanted to count the sighting of a cactus wren on a cactus, we could consider that.
I think this would be a lot of fun. It might not take all year to complete, though I like the idea of some hapless birder frantically driving around the city limits of Nashville in December desperately looking for a wayward, late warbler.
State Bird Big Year
This is the same idea as above, but probably even easier: see every state's State Bird in that state in the shortest time possible. The travel! Regular Big Year participants do a crazy amount of travel - but I doubt they go to all 50 states (and yes, pushy "include Hawaii in the ABA" people, the aloha state would count). How patriotic! The downside, of course, as we've covered here before, is that the list of state birds is completely terrible. Oh cool, I saw another cardinal!
Heard Only/Nocturnal Flight Call Only
Two variations on an "experts only" theme. This one's perfect for those birding snobs out there who are above having to lift optics to their faces to get a closer look at a bird. It would be a lot like a normal big year, really, except way way harder and with a lot fewer pelagic trips.
Alphabetical Big Year
Hahaha can you even imagine this? You would have to start with the first bird in the ABA checklist - alphabetically - and had to move bird-by-bird. I love it. You can get an alphabetical checklist by downloading and resorting the .xcl from the ABA website. So, you'd have to start on Jan. 1 by finding an ... anyone know it without me telling you? ... think ... an Abert's towhee. Once you saw one, you couldn't count Bird #2 unless it was an Acadian flycatcher. Bird #3 is back to the southwest for an acorn woodpecker. This would be so fun. There might have to be a rule that, like, code 4 and 5 birds don't count, otherwise you'd get stuck on #8 Amazon Kingfisher and never make it anywhere. Someone do this c'mon I dare you.
OK are there other ideas?