A report of a rare bird would send him hitching nonstop from Pacific to Atlantic and back again. Maybe not all that unusual a thing to do in the seventies, but what Kenn was searching for was a little different: not sex, drugs, God, or even self, but birds.
This book is most useful to experienced birders.At sixteen, Kenn Kaufman dropped out of the high school where he was student council president and hit the road, hitching back and forth across America, from Alaska to Florida, Maine to Mexico.
With the Internet, birding has virtually no limits. I couldn’t help but compare it to birding now. Kaufman describes this time as a period of rapid-growth in birding because communication had been increased through hot-line numbers and birding clubs. The book was a fun read, and I learned a lot about the birding subculture in the 1970’s. Towards the conclusion of his Big Year, Kaufman notes, “list-chasing not the best way to learn birds” (306). A birder in Kaufman’s memoir says about listing: “The list is just a frivolous incentive for birding…The journey is what counts” (44). It almost seems like it becomes more important to check things off a list than it does to enjoy watching the birds. I sometimes feel that birders get so carried away with listing, that they forget why they ever came to love birds in the first place.
I don’t think they would understand why someone would want to go to the landfill just to see a Mexican Crow. His adventures are interesting, but I don’t know if a non-birder would want to read about them. He never spent money on lodging so if he didn’t have friends to stay with, he slept outside. He hitchhiked everywhere he went and lived very cheaply.
Many people dream of traveling to such a variety of birding hot spots, but most of us cannot because of the cost! But Kaufman didn’t have money. He visited the Florida Keys, Alaska, the East, the West, and everywhere in between. He spent the entire year doing nothing but travel. Kaufman traveled all over the continent, strategically planning out trips that would allow him to see the most species possible. This is Kaufman’s memoir, which chronicles the events of 1973 when he undertook the task of seeing 600+ species of birds in North America, all within the timeframe of one calendar year. Most birders are familiar with Kenn Kaufman’s nature guides, but this book is different. Title: Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder
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