The Big Twitch

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Sean Dooley seems like a well adjusted, functioning member of society but beneath the respectable veneer he harbours a dark secret. He is a hard-core birdwatcher (aka twitcher').Sean takes a year off to try to break the Australian twitching record - he has to see more than 700 birds in twelve months. Travelling the length and breadth of Australia, he stops at nothing in search of this birdwatching Holy Grail, blowing his inheritance, his career prospects and any chance he has of finding a girlfriend.Part confessional, part travelogue, this is a true story about obsession. It's about seeking the meaning of life, trying to work out what normal' is, and searching for the elusive Grey Falcon (the bird, not the car). Sean's story of how he followed his childhood dream of becoming a national champion is both inspiring and ridiculous. Could this be the most pathetic great achievement in Australian history?From Publishers WeeklyDooley makes his living in Australia writing television comedy scripts, but his real passion is bird-watching—in fact, he'll frequently "twitch," dropping whatever he's doing to travel hundreds of miles for a brief glimpse of a recently sighted rare species. In 2002, he set out to break the record for the most birds spotted throughout the Australian territories in a single year. The effort to track down more than 700 species takes him from a sooty owl sitting on a tree branch in the early hours of New Year's Day to a blue-faced parrot finch climbing a blade of grass on Christmas Eve. Stories about frustrated efforts to spot various birds show a winning humor, but without any pictures of birds or their habitats, all the locations start to blur together. The amiable, conversational tone keeps the story from getting dull, and the Aussie cultural references are easily deciphered, but Dooley's accomplishment in the end feels anticlimactic. (Aug. ) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistBirding is known as twitching in Britain and the Commonwealth. Serious twitchers chase rare birds to rack up serious life lists, and really serious twitchers try to see more species in one year than any of their peers. Dooley, a comedy writer, tried to break the Australian record of 700 bird species seen in 365 days, and he records the events in this marvelously funny memoir. He loves birds and twitching, but also sees his hobby with the clear, sarcastic eye of a man who is aware that most others find serious birders seriously weird. As the author takes a year off work, blows through his inheritance, and travels thousands of miles crisscrossing the Australian continent, his hilarious commentary on his own sanity will keep even the nonbirding reader in stitches. Prepare to laugh out loud. Nancy BentCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved