Birding Without Borders

by Noah Strycker

  “Anyway,” Oscar said, “you should have the world record wrapped up pretty soon.”

  “Yeah, but the record is sort of beside the point,” I said, “though it will be satisfying to beat it. I’m still going for 5,000, which is a long way off.”

  “The record is important, though,” Oscar said, “because people will get excited about it. All you have to say is that you broke a world record, and anyone can understand what that means, even if they have no idea what birding is.”

  He was right, of course. No matter what the original goal, all eyes—including mine—were now on the existing mark of 4,341 birds.

  A couple days later I landed in the tea plantations of the Western Ghats mountain range, near the south Indian city of Munnar, with a gregarious birder named Harsha Jayaramaiah who seemed to know everybody in the country. He and his friends had generously organized among themselves to save money during my stay by sharing accommodations, food, and transportation. Their gift meant a lot to me, for it cut my total expenses to about $15 a day—the lowest of the whole year and well under my typical daily expenses of about $200—while allowing me to enjoy the welcome hospitality of local birders. On my second day in India, I was just thirty-nine birds short of the record, which meant I’d probably pass it in another day or two. Harsha thought we might add a few more species in these mountains, including the Broad-tailed Grassbird—a skulky brown thing found only in grassy patches at high elevations in the Western Ghats. He couldn’t locate a grassbird on short notice, though, so we stopped at a tourism office in Munnar for help.

  Harsha asked to see a friend who knew about the bird, and sure enough, a man came out to give us some tips. When I thanked him, the man asked about my trip.

  “Well, I hope to set a world record in the next day or so,” I said, “for the number of birds anyone has ever seen in one year.”

  The man’s face lit up like a light bulb.

  “A world record?” he asked. “Are you going to submit it to the Guinness Book of World Records?”

  “I did submit an official application, eight months ago,” I said, “but I haven’t heard back.”

  “That is strange,” the man said. “They should reply in a few weeks.”

  “That’s what the website says,” I said, “but they can take as long as they want. Being in the Guinness book wasn’t my main goal, anyway. I just want to see as many birds as I can.”

  “But how can you prove it?” the man pressed. “You will need evidence!”

  “Birding doesn’t really work like that—it’s a personal adventure,” I said, and the man looked dubious. “But I do have witnesses for every bird I’ve seen this year, and I’ve photographed a lot of them, too.”

  “Hmmph,” he said, waggling his head. “Any record attempt must be documented. I had a friend who made it into the Guinness book earlier this year, and he had to provide all kinds of evidence.”

  “What was it for?” I asked.

  The man glowed.

  “Breaking iron rods with the bare fist!” he said, triumphantly.

  It was obvious that he took this record very seriously. When Harsha and I left a few minutes later, on a mission to see the grassbird, the man was still sitting at his desk, fanning himself in the stuffy tourism office, lost in happy remembrance of his friend’s colossal achievement.

  ✧-✧-✧

  World records carry the mystique of perfection—a Platonic ideal of the material world. They are easy to understand and elegantly simple. Logically, there can be only one largest animal (the blue whale) and lightest element (hydrogen). Everybody knows that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth, and the altitude of its summit—a somewhat random artifact of geology—is less significant for its exact elevation (29,029 feet) than as the ultimate benchmark against other lofty heights. Superlatives help define our universe by precisely measuring its outer limits, giving context for everything else.

  For most of history, all world records were intrinsic: they existed, by virtue of physics or happenstance, whether or not anyone noticed. The world’s oldest tree (a 5,062-year-old bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California) didn’t set out to achieve distinction; it has merely stood longer than any other tree. Likewise, the cheetah isn’t consciously trying to be the fastest land animal when it sprints at speeds exceeding seventy miles per hour—it is more focused on its prey. Such records, born of chance or necessity, have little to do with recognition.

  Only in recent years have people begun to equate world records with achievement. The notion of being the best is seductive, especially in an increasingly quantitative culture, and it’s a quite modern concept. The ancient Olympic games originated as part of a religious festival honoring the Greek god Zeus, which went dormant in AD 393; their revival in 1896, more than 1,500 years later, dispensed with everything but unadulterated competition, leading to the multibillion-dollar spectacle we have today in which racewalkers and trampoliners are judged as solemnly as foreign policy. These days, we worship humans who run, jump, ride, swim, throw, wrestle, skate, ski, and curl better than other humans. It’s not really logical, when you think about it: Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt are international celebrities, but the also-rans who finished a hundredth of a second behind them remain largely anonymous. And yet world records—or “WR,” in Olympic parlance—are worth gold.

  Practically speaking, our record-setting obsession aligns with two recent societal developments: enough leisure time to pursue non-survival-related activities, and the ability to know what other people are doing in distant places. It’s hard to train for the decathlon if you work at a backbreaking job for eighteen hours a day, and equally difficult to proclaim a world champion without transcontinental communication.

  Our greatest authority on world records started, according to legend, with a barroom dispute about birds. In the early 1950s, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, attended a shooting party in Ireland and got into an argument about which was the fastest game bird in Europe—he believed it was the golden-plover, but his friend maintained that the Red Grouse was speedier, and no reference could provide a definitive answer. Shortly afterward, Sir Hugh hired two journalists to research facts and figures for a collection of superlatives, first published as the Guinness Book of Records in 1955. The book quickly took on a life of its own; by 2015, Guinness World Records was the best-selling book of all time, with more than 100 million copies in print.

  Sir Hugh Beaver intended his book as a reference, but it has morphed over time into a more interactive treasury. With no categorical restrictions imposed, people devised increasingly esoteric ideas, spurred on by the prospect of personal glory. Instead of describing the world as it is, the book has become the repository of humanity’s sweeping desire to stand out from the crowd—a vision of the world as it might be, with sufficient ingenuity.

  And so, while Guinness today lists the “fastest bird (diving)” as the Peregrine Falcon—once clocked in a stoop at 242 miles per hour—its database brims mostly with obscure human achievements. The latest triumphs are added in an endless, dizzying stream: largest display of origami elephants (78,564), most traffic cones balanced on the chin (26), largest sushi mosaic (608.16 square feet), and, my personal favorite, “most apples held in the mouth and cut by a chainsaw in one minute—self (blindfolded),” a terrifying stunt performed by an Australian man who calls himself The Space Cowboy. Each year, more than 50,000 people apply for new records.

  I love all kinds of hijinks, but what does a world record mean when practically anything goes? Most people agree that running the fastest marathon is a stunning feat, but these other records, like hurling light bulbs or eating cars, are something else—a form of self-expression, perhaps. According to Guinness, each attempt must be measurable, verifiable, and breakable.

  Searching for “bird” on Guinness’s website returns more than 1,000 certified records, many of which are held by birds themselves: the Wild Turkey has the strongest gizzar
d, the Dusky Grouse has the shortest migration, and the Lake Duck of Argentina has the “largest reproductive organ for a bird” (its retractable spine-covered penis has been measured at 16.7 inches).

  Birdwatching feats are conspicuously absent, probably because Guinness considers them unverifiable. In my case, the Guinness Records Management Team sent their final decision nearly a year after I’d submitted my application: “Unfortunately, we are afraid to say that we cannot accept your proposal as a Guinness World Records title. Every record must be measurable and we feel that it would be difficult to provide an accurate measurement for your proposal.”

  This is why we have a Guinness record for the highest score on the Angry Birds video game, but nothing for those who pursue real, live birds.

  Different people have their own reasons for striving toward a goal, and the psychology of record-setting is complicated. In a recent TED talk titled “The Puzzle of Motivation,” viewed on YouTube nearly 20 million times, the analyst Dan Pink showed that external rewards have a surprisingly weak effect on all kinds of performance. After reviewing a pile of literature, Pink concluded that autonomy, mastery, and purpose—self-determination in the context of a larger focus—are much more powerful, and that real motivation comes from within. It’s not the record that makes people pogo-stick up Mount Fuji, in other words; it’s the personal desire to prove oneself and contribute to the world.

  This is a subtly different way of viewing achievement that applies well to ambitious feats like Big Years: the end result may not be the reward, but the journey isn’t exactly it, either. You need a goal, or at least a direction, to discover a true sense of purpose.

  At least for me, journeys with a mission are far more rewarding—whether running a marathon or birding the world. It doesn’t really matter what I’m seeking, only that I am inwardly driven to find it. Never was this truer than during my Big Year. My hope of seeing 5,000 species, and breaking the existing record in the process, motivated me to go out into the world, look for new birds every day, and celebrate and share what I found.

  ✧-✧-✧

  Two days later, on September 16, Harsha and I arrived at the Thattekad Bird Sanctuary, a lowland forest patch along the Periyar River, at first light. With twenty-seven species to go to the record, we met a local birder named Sanu Sasi, who knew the area’s birds like the back of his hand. The three of us entered the sanctuary in lively spirits.

  Soon after dawn, a convoy of vehicles pulled up: the Ezhupunna Birders, a group of about a dozen young and enthusiastic bird lovers, had heard about my quest and wanted to help. They had driven two hours from the city of Kochi, having risen early to make the trip, and spilled out in a gaggle of smiles and handshakes.

  With more than a dozen eager pairs of eyes in the forest, the birds had little chance of hiding. A Malabar Trogon, cherry red underneath with a black head and a thin white border encircling its neck, surveyed our group with apparent amusement from a high branch. Sanu pointed out a couple of Flame-throated Bulbuls, greenish yellow with black heads and orange throats, while Dark-fronted Babblers squeaked and rattled from the nearby undergrowth. Several White-bellied Treepies, a flashy and long-tailed member of the crow family endemic to southern India, called noisily from the forest, eventually affording great views while crossing a gap between trees. The birding was so brisk that I could barely keep up, and the morning hours flew by with more than twenty new species.

  By noon, I was counting down single digits: a tiny Heart-spotted Woodpecker, black and white with a spiky crest and practically no tail, put me within ten species of surpassing the record; and after several more sightings, a White-rumped Needletail, a type of swift, sliced the gap down to five. But then, with the record dangling so close, activity stalled. In early afternoon a discouraging, drizzling rain began to fall, birds stopped singing, and it seemed that we might not reach the hoped-for number that day after all.

  The Ezhupunna Birders reluctantly clocked out for lunch, wishing luck to Harsha, Sanu, and me. With rain pounding, we held a quick strategy session under the shelter of a leaky, unoccupied hut. Sanu suggested that we look for some common water-loving species near his house a few miles away, so we spent the next couple of hours in a downpour, tramping back and forth across a grassy field; one by one, we managed to see a White-rumped Munia, a White-breasted Waterhen, and a flyover Gray-fronted Green-Pigeon, endemic to this part of India. Now I was one tantalizing species away from tying the world record.

  “Hey, I just saw a Common Iora!” yelled Harsha, who was staring at a patch of low trees a couple hundred yards away. “Come on, I think it just zipped out the other side.”

  The three of us sloshed across the field to catch up with the bird, my heart pounding with excitement and exertion, but the iora—a sparrow-sized, yellowish green songbird with black-and-white wings—proved flitty and elusive. I couldn’t get my eyes on it. We couldn’t give up the search, even though it seemed a little ridiculous: the Common Iora is one of the most familiar bird species in India, yet right now it seemed like the single most important bird in the world.

  Finally, after a frustrating half-hour of peekaboo, the iora danced onto a branch right in front of me, and Sanu, Harsha, and I splashed high fives.

  “That ties the record of 4,341 birds,” I said. “We just need one more to break it!”

  Sanu and Harsha caught each other’s eye.

  “Yes, we’ve been saving one for you,” Sanu said. “Come on, we will return to the Thattekad forest for your next species—it’s a special one.”

  “Just don’t look at anything else until we get there,” Harsha said. “We don’t want an unremarkable bird like the Common Iora to pass the world record!”

  As we made the ten-minute drive back to the bird sanctuary, the rain lightened into swirling mist. I stared at my feet in the back seat, water puddling around my shoes, wondering what Sanu had staked out for us. Harsha called the Ezhupunna Birders, who had finished their lunch, and they met us at the entrance to the forest, along with several other people I didn’t know, in anticipation of the big moment.

  My stomach gnawed with hunger—I hadn’t eaten all day—and my skin was soaked through, but none of that mattered. All I could think about was the imminent milestone. Here I was on Day 259 of my Big Year, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure that had already taken me on a splendid journey through Antarctica, South and Central America, the United States, Europe, Africa, and India. I still aimed for 5,000 birds, but hurdling over the world record was admittedly exciting. Heightened energy sparked in the air.

  Sanu led the way into the forest on foot. At a spot where the trail crossed a small creek, he stopped quietly and gestured toward a dense group of trees.

  “Do you see it?” he whispered.

  “What?” I said. “A bird?”

  Harsha laughed.

  “It’s no fair if we point it out,” he said. “You have to find this one yourself!”

  They eyed me while I scanned the thick foliage, my adrenaline kicking in. Nothing moved, not even a breath of wind. The air hung heavy, the light muted by an overhanging canopy and mist. What should I be looking for?

  I felt the sense of being watched, and turned around to see . . . what was this? A TV camera and crew had somehow materialized out of nowhere.

  “They’re from an Indian news station,” Harsha said, “and they want to show your expression when you see the record-breaking bird!”

  Behind the camera crew loitered the Ezhupunna Birders and several others, all of them watching expectantly. That moment was so weird that I’ll never forget it: about twenty people staring at me while I stared blankly into the trees, hoping to spot the bird that would officially break the record. Birdwatching is not usually a spectator sport.

  Then I saw it: a clump of dead leaves that, on closer inspection, wasn’t vegetative at all. I raised my binoculars with a sense of fate. Clinging to a horizontal branch in the midcanopy, partly obscured by foliage, a pair of bizarre-looking birds snuggled
together. They were brown with rufous accents, fluffed out in a round ball, with their eyes squeezed shut and wings tucked into soft plumage; their heads were so large that they seemed not to have necks, and their bills were the same width. The effect suggested something between a decomposing clod and a plush toy.

  “No way—it’s a pair of Sri Lanka Frogmouths!” I exclaimed, with a huge grin. “They’re roosting here for the day, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Harsha said, as he grasped my arm. “The Sri Lanka Frogmouth is an excellent record-breaking bird, nocturnal and not easy to see! Lucky for us, Sanu knew where to find these ones.”

  Sanu shook my hand, too, and then everyone was hugging and clapping backs and smiling.

  Surges of euphoria, relief, and disbelief swept over me, and my heart swelled with gratitude and tenderness for all my fellow creatures—people and birds alike. In the midst of the merrymaking, I just stood there, savoring it, observing the scene as if detached from my own body. Through it all, the sleeping frogmouths seemed oblivious. We studied them for a few minutes, then left them in peace. Some of the birders said goodbye, but Harsha told me that he had arranged an after-party at the house of nearby bird guru Eldhose K. V., a well-respected, even-tempered character who had spent many years studying the south Indian birds.

  A few of us carpooled over there in a jovial, stately caravan. I was invited in with a couple of other guests while a dozen other birders stayed outside, watching the White-cheeked Barbets vie with Malabar Gray Hornbills on a fruit feeder in the yard. A table had been set for tea in a small room. As I entered, things took an interesting turn: a man dressed in a floor-length red robe rose from a chair.

  “Greetings,” he said, extending a hand.

  “Noah, this is Kuriakose Mor Eusebius, a bishop from Kothamangalam,” Eldhose said, with elaborate politeness.

  The bishop wore a dark beard, a tight-fitting cap, a high collar, and a gigantic crucifix around his neck. He explained, in soft tones, that he had driven quite a distance, and I couldn’t help but wonder what had brought such a distinguished guest to take tea with me.