The Nature of Things

I am a devoted birder so I am always up for a good book about birding. Here's one about an Australian "big year."  ~~~~~ Big Twitch: One Man, One Continent, a Race Against Time: A True Story about Birdwatching by Sean Dooley My rating: 3 of 5 stars The record for a "Big Year" in Australia was 633 birds.  That was before Sean Dooley decided to spend his year breaking it.  Not only did he want to break it, he wanted to annihilate it.  He set himself the goal of seeing and identifying 700 birds from January 1 to December 31, 2002. It helped that he didn't have much of a personal life at the time - no family, no significant other, no one to slow him down.  No 9:00 to 5:00 job either.  He was a comedy writer in real life, but that wasn't requiring much of his time and effort just then.  He was able to single-mindedly devote himself to his obsession. This book tells how he did it, with all the ups and downs along the way.  He had a lot of help from fri...