The subject of today’s interrogation is big year birder and American Birding Association (ABA) board member Lynn Barber.  Birding since age 7, Lynn has done several big years, notably a record-breaking Texas big year in 2005 and an ABA big year in 2008 which she finished with 723 species, the third-best at the time (since surpassed by Bob Ake).  She wrote about her ABA big year in Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year, scheduled to be released on March 19 by Texas A&M University Press. [The previous link goes to Amazon. Alternatively, the book is also available from Buteo Books as well as other outlets.] Lynn lives in Fort Worth, Texas and is a registered patent attorney.  In addition to being on the ABA board of directors, she’s a former president and current treasurer of the Fort Worth Audubon Society and president of the Texas Ornithological Society.

Lynn agreed to answer some questions about her big year and the ABA:

Z Bird Birding Blog: Why?

Lynn Barber: I assume you mean why on earth did I do an ABA big year. I tried to answer this question concisely in the introduction to the book, because most people just can’t imagine why someone would do such an obsessive-type thing. I could go on for pages about it, but probably it’s best to say it as I did in the book: “…a combination of just loving to bird and needing an excuse to do it nearly non-stop for a full year, the need to compete and see how well I could do, particularly against men, and the opportunity such a year provided to take pictures of birds and have adventures about which I could give talks, and maybe, about which I could write a book.” I did not realize that it would give me an opportunity to be interviewed!

Z: How did you prepare for your big year and when did you start?

LB: I started taking notes of where others had gone during their big years, e.g., from The Big Year book and from other accounts, about one-and-a-half years early, when I first got the idea to do such a thing. My preliminary investigations made me realize that I could not afford to do it as well as I wanted to, and for awhile I abandoned the entire idea. Then about six months before the year started (after my husband okayed our going into debt so far), I began again, making charts and graphs and calendars to figure out when to go for any bird that wasn’t easy to get. I used the ABA codes (1-6) to help me decide which birds to plan to chase, and which to be more relaxed about. The thing that worked best was to take a small calendar and paste post-it notes on it saying things like “go to California from [date] to [date] for X”, or “take NC pelagic this week”. Then when I got multiple overlapping post-it notes, I juggled things around to try to get everything and not miss anything. Some birds, like Saw-whet and Boreal Owls and Gray Partridges that are not rare, but are just hard to find, I sort of neglected in this process, and found myself scrambling for, and not always succeeding, as the year went on.

Z: You finished the year with 723 species.  In hindsight, do you think you could’ve done better?  From what I remember, there was a below-average number of vagrants in Alaska when you were there.

LB: If I had had unlimited funds, and no clients expecting me to do patent work for them, I definitely could have done better. There were days that I just birded and did not seek or chase birds needed for my big year. I “wasted” time doing my usual three Breeding Bird Surveys, where I never have found an unusual bird. There were one-day wonders I might have chased and might have found. I would have flown oftener and driven less. Alaska did not produce the way it should have, but there’s nothing I could have done about that. The year you choose to do a big year can make an astounding difference! My Texas big year (in 2005) was record-breaking because not only was I obsessed with doing it, but the birds came to Texas that year in record-breaking numbers. I do not think 2008 was a particularly good year to do an ABA big year. No way to know in advance.

Z: Birding can be exhausting, especially doing a big year.  Did it ever become a chore?

LB: Birding definitely became a chore when I faced, or was in the middle of, endless travel, or endless waiting. Or often, when I faced things (like pelagic trips or whitewater rafting) that scare me. I have to work at being patient and waiting was usually my biggest headache. But I have been a birder long enough to know that eventually the boring or the difficult things do end, and that most scary things aren’t really that bad if you want to do them badly enough.

Z: Did you ever think about quitting?

LB: Yes, of course, I thought about it. I think about a lot of things that I never do however. Every now and then I resisted the pull of going looking for birds and sort of slowed down a bit, when there were no known birds to chase, but I never seriously thought about quitting. I would probably not have quit on December 31st if I could have figured out a way to lengthen the year. ABA Big Two-Years anyone?

Z: What was your best experience during the year?

LB: That is impossible to say – too many ecstatic, surprisingly wonderful experiences. But when asked that question, what usually comes first to mind is my Spotted Owl quest for the year. The Spotted Owl is one of my favorite birds, and before my big year I had seen them most of the years I lived in Texas in the Guadalupe Mts. and once in Arizona. It did not occur to me that it might be a problem, and I even put a picture of one on my big year business cards that I handed out during my big year. But I could not find one in 2008! On my trips to Arizona I tried the usual spots – Miller and Scheelite Canyons. I went to the Texas Guadalupe Mts. Nada. And then at the end of the summer, there were repeated reports of two Spotted Owls in Miller Canyon. Day after day. So I drove out there, normally a two-day drive. Along the way, when I checked my emails there was a report of NOT finding any owls in Miller Canyon after some 10 or 12 straight days of finding one! I kept on, and when I arrived at Miller Canyon, one had not been seen for a couple of days. I tried anyway, without success. So I decided to abandon that chase and just go birding in Madera Canyon, a favorite spot of mine, and not think of owls. I had a lovely hike, adding a bird to my year list. On the way down, when I could get a cell phone signal, I found that I had three messages, all telling me that two Spotted Owls had been refound in Miller Canyon. After a wild drive back to Miller Canyon, a Fort Worth birder (Helen Nelson) staying at the lodge trudged up the mountain with me, and we located the owls!! They were barely above head level, dozing, photographic delights. I commemorated them with the cover painting on my book. A never-to-be-forgotten experience!

Z: And the worst experience?

LB: Probably another owl trip was my worst experience, although the Whooper Swan chase comes close [see below for more about that]. The late year trip to Ontario for a Boreal Owl (four had been reported) began with an injured plane return to DFW before we finally took off. When I got to the hamlet near the owl spot, I found that it had snowed with over-three-foot drifts at the owl area, and the one-mile road in to the site was not plowed. I struggled up the road, filling one of my boots with snow that became ice water for much of the trek. I did not find any little owls at all (but did have numerous Short-eared and Snowy Owls). The return plane, with us in it, sat at the Ontario airport for something like six hours in light snow, we were deplaned, reticketed on another plane, replaned, and sat some more. Awful trip, but the scenery was lovely.

Z: What did you get out of doing a big year, other than a book and the dubious honor of being interviewed by me?

LB: I think the best things I got out of doing the big year are the memories (trite, but true) and the satisfaction of actually having done it. Part of the latter includes the feeling of being unique, which I like. I am very happy about having a book published about it, primarily because it gives me an excuse to go out and talk to people about birds, which I love to do (it also turns out that it is fun to be interviewed). So, if I may, I’d like to include here that I hope some of the people who read this interview will check with their local birding groups to see if maybe they’d like to hear me come and entertain them with stories about my big year. [Lynn’s speaking schedule is listed on her home page.]

Z: Any advice for aspiring big yearists?

LB: I guess my advice depends on how serious they are. If they just want to see a lot of birds in one year, they can do as one person I met did – just park their camper in different good places in the selected geographic area, and move to different areas that have different birds periodically. That way you can probably get 550 or so in the ABA area. But if you want to get more birds, you just have to plan a lot, and travel a lot. A year moves along relentlessly. You can’t say “oops” and go back once spring migration has passed. And you need to figure out a way to both plan and be flexible, so that you can drop everything and chase a mega-rarity immediately. And you have to save a lot and/or collect credit cards and/or have friends to share the costs with. Of course, if the big year is a “green” big year, the cost (and the possible birds) goes down a lot, so the type of big year determines the type of advice needed.

Z: Here’s a philosophical question for you: How big does a year have to be to be called a big year?

LB: To me a “big year” is a year where you try to reach a goal of numbers of species seen that is difficult to do in one year in that geographic area. My threshold is low. My stated goal for 2008 was 650 species, which requires a dedicated effort at least, but deep in my heart my real goal was 700. Either would have been a big year in my view. Maybe even 600 would a big year, or at least a “little big year”. Maybe it really is any number that makes you (and others) say “wow!”. After all, you are doing it to impress at least yourself by doing something that you’ve never done, or attempted, before.

Z: Now the really important question: We birded together a few times during your big year.  Am I in the book?

LB: You are definitely in the book, and I am very grateful for your enthusiastic support and help in my big year. You appear (and are featured) in the discussion of the trek to Oregon for the Wood Sandpiper, in the account of our wonderful trip to Newfoundland in December which you scheduled so it fit within my year, and in the less happy account of our arduous, unsuccessful trek to Idaho for the vanished Whooper Swan. [Thanks, Lynn, for giving me the opportunity to link to one of my own tours. The next scheduled one is in Jan 2012, but if anyone wants to go now for all the rarities currently there – Black-tailed, Yellow-legged, and Slaty-backed Gulls, Common Snipe, etc. – please email me.]

Z: OK, now the second-most important question: Did you spell my name correctly?  It usually isn’t.  And I hope you didn’t mention that I couldn’t stay awake during the drive to Oregon and made you drive almost the entire way yourself overnight.  And that Whooper Swan?  Missing it wouldn’t have been so bad if it didn’t show up again just a few weeks after we chased it.  $&#^!

LB: I do believe, and I certainly do hope, that I spelled your name correctly. And yes, one of the very bad things about doing any serious chasing, such as a big year, is the fact that birds often just do not behave in an acceptable manner! The Whooper Swan is a very clear example of that. When the chase eventually succeeds (as with the Spotted Owl), you can forgive and forget the problems, but not with the swan. It irritates me still. And there are others from the big year too that still irritate me when I think of them – Boreal Owls and Connecticut Warblers being two not-so-rare examples.

Z: Let’s shift gears and talk about your involvement with the ABA. You weren’t on the board for very long before everything blew up last summer, right?  [For those unfamiliar with the story, the former president’s tenure ended unexpectedly.] Did you ever wake up one morning and think, “I didn’t sign up for this“?

LB: I did say exactly that: “I didn’t sign up for this”. And I did consider quitting because I definitely hate controversy, but I hung in there.

Z: The controversy of last summer certainly stirred up a lot of discussion about the ABA on the internet and seemed to renew interest in it.  Do you think it was actually a positive event for the ABA in the grand scheme of things?

LB: In the midst of the controversy, I would definitely have answered “no”, but now as things have calmed down a bit, it may well have served a good purpose as it brought the ABA to the attention of people who were unaware of it. And when the multitudes rejoiced in our new ABA leader on Facebook and Birdchat and elsewhere, many people may well have realized that the ABA did have potential. It did not hurt either that Drew Whelan in his Gulf reporting and work had an ABA affiliation. All in all, I am hopeful about the ABA and am glad that I am on the board.

Z: I’m sure you don’t want to step on new President/CEO Jeff Gordon’s toes, so we’ll keep in mind that you’re just one voice among many for these next questions: What do you see happening with the ABA in the future?  What would you like to see happen?

LB: I hope that ABA works very hard to work with and appeal to “normal” birders, not just cater to the professional, hardcore bird-people. I want it to offer bird-related events of a wide variety of types, from low-cost bird trips and meetings, to higher-end trips that are more expensive. In other words, I want it to be a birder’s organization, for all levels of birder, including young people and beginners, many of whom may continue to be birders and grow in their birding if given encouragement and education and opportunity by the ABA. I think the publications are critical in this regard. I also hope that Birder’s Exchange continues and grows as part of ABA.

Z: Anything else, either about the book or other stuff, that you would like to talk about?

LB: Although I have periodic guilty feelings about the non-greenness of my big year, I am so glad that I did it! I strongly recommend that anyone who is attracted to such an “extreme” endeavor give it serious consideration. Of all the things that I have done in my life, my ABA big year (and my Texas big year) are way up there at the top in having been personally fulfilling for me. So I say “go for it” if you want to and if you can.

Z: Thank you, Lynn.