The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Obmascik Mark

Author:Obmascik, Mark [Obmascik, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2008-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

Even in the strange world of a Big Year, this was a strange problem. Miller still had eight more hours in Arizona, but he had already spotted nearly all the winter birds of the desert Southwest. He couldn’t grab an earlier flight; Southwest Airlines would make him pay too much to change reservations. He couldn’t try again for the spotted owl; the Huachuca Mountains were a slushy and muddy mess. And he wasn’t about to go off and blindly beat the brush for some undiscovered species; after five days of predawn wake-up calls, he hardly had the energy to roll out of bed. What to do?

Miller drove north from Nogales on Interstate 19, the only freeway in America with distances marked solely in kilometers, and blew past the sprawl of Tucson and the brown cloud of Phoenix. He drove west until all human habitation stopped, then drove ten miles more. He parked. This was the desert that was never on postcards. Flat, brown, and barely vegetated, the moonscape stretched as far as he could see. There were no other cars. He was alone.

In the distance, he heard something. He pointed his binoculars and saw movement. He walked in that direction. Whatever it was—it looked brown, with a long tail, probably some kind of thrasher—it moved again. He followed. Soon he couldn’t see his car anymore. He could hear the bird, though, farther away. He trailed it.

In typical Miller preparation, he had brought no water bottle. At least the desert wasn’t hot today. Miller had been so intent on chasing the bird that he hadn’t seen the sky clouding over. When El Niño began leaking on him, he was at least a half mile from the road.

He ignored the rain. He had three more hours in Arizona and had no interest spending them on some vinyl chair at Sky Harbor International Airport. He followed the birdsong. He got wetter.

After concluding he could sneak no closer than one hundred yards to the still-unidentified thrasher, he turned back. He squished when he walked.

In the car he was so hot and wet that he fogged all the windows. He flipped on his tape recorder and fast-forwarded straight to the thrasher section to match the call of the bird that had just turned him into a sopping mess.

Someone knocked on his window. He jumped. He wiped away the fog and saw a Border Patrol officer peering in.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Birdwatching.”

“Birdwatching? What are you watching for?”

“Sage thrasher, curve-billed thrasher, Crissal thrasher, Bendire’s thrasher.”

“Well, I’ve never seen anybody out here before. It’s a rainy day today.”

Miller didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that.

“What have you got in your hands?”

“Tape recorder.”

“Play it.”

“Huh?”

“I want to hear the tape recorder. Play the tape recorder. Turn it on.”

Miller turned it on and felt relieved. The tape was proof: that bird was a sage thrasher.

The Border Patrol agent still looked perturbed. Nobody came out here to look at birds, he said. What they looked for was airdropped drugs.

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