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Perfect for anyone who enjoys birdwatching or
traveling!

I really enjoyed reading this book about Noah's adventures around the world birding. The author sets out to travel around the world in a year and see at least 5,000 different bird species. This book is part travelogue, natural history, and memoir. The writing is very clear and readable. I really enjoyed the travels to many of the lesser known areas. Many of the characters he meets along his travels were a lot of fun. The book does have a lot of humor. Enjoy this arm chair travel.

I love travelogues as they allow me to live vicariously through the words of the daring souls who pack up and go tick off things on their bucket list. This one is particularly riveting as the author traverses the world in search of birds. Both of these are passions of mine and I found myself turning page after page after page of this very satisfying read.

Birding Without Borders is a fascinating look into the life of a birder. But not just any birder. This man, Noah Strycker has set out to break a world record by sighting half of the world’s known bird species in one year’s time! That goal may seem impossible, but he manages to pull it off.

The book begins with an explanation of why birders keep life lists and how it can actually become competitive! I had no idea. Birding has caught on and is becoming more of a global phenomenon. There are now many available bird guides to the species of the world, and social media has allowed birders to communicate like never before. Into this new world of birding comes the competitive aspects usually reserved for sports.

Noah begins his quest on New Year’s Day in Antarctica, of all places. The first bird he spots is a Cape Petrel. The birds he spots during his Big Year have to be wild birds. There are rules governing this, and no zoo birds or dead birds can be counted. All have to be wild birds spotted in the wild. Noah also sets the goal for himself that he and a companion both have to spot the bird for it to count. In his travels, he meets many other birders and shares the experience with them. The other complicating factor is that there is no agreed-upon list of all the world’s birds. Different lists have different totals. So, he chose to use the Clements Checklist.

Noah’s travels take him to every continent and he finds some fantastic, and sometimes rare, birds to add to his list. The story of how he does it makes for interesting reading. I thought a book about watching birds might be rather boring, but this one is not. He has adventures in which his vehicle gets stuck high in the isolated mountains and he and his companions have to hike out many miles. He has to navigate through finding his companions at each destination, and then finding the birds he most wants to see in that particular country. He has to travel with just his backpack for an entire year, with only a couple changes of clothes. So, you can imagine how dirty he gets out in the field while birding. It all seems like quite the amazing adventure. It is certainly not for everyone, but he did a lot of advance planning and things worked out well.

The book also has a good message of conservation. Bird habitat disappears every year and preserving habitat can only help the birds and other species there. I liked that the entire text emphasized conservation and got this message across in a non-preachy way. Noah meets a man who used to be a logger cutting down the rainforest. But he found out that people want to see rare birds and now makes his living guiding them. He no longer cuts the rainforest down and his property is a preserve for birds.

The story flows well and you don’t end up with a dull account of, “I saw this bird on this day, then I saw this bird, etc.” It’s not dry and boring. It’s written in an engaging style that draws the reader into the adventure and allows you to see what it’s like to see something incredibly rare. To know that you are one of the few people on earth to have ever seen a certain rare species is pretty amazing.

Each chapter tells the story of one particular interesting species, or one particularly interesting experience. He does not go through and tell you one by one every bird he saw. There is a list at the end of the book where the curious reader can see them in a numbered format though. But, the text itself concentrates on telling the story and giving background information about the country, or its people, or the story of its birds.

Noah sights his five-thousandth bird, a Flame-crowned Flowerpecker, in the Phillipines. Thus, he reached the goal he had set to see 5,000 birds. But, with several months remaining in the year, he had time to find more. So, he went on. He ends up with 6042 birds on his list. Not bad for one year.

This book emphasizes not only the birds, but the birders themselves. The sense of camaraderie that he feels when he meets the other birders, no matter what country they are in, shines through the writing. Birders the world over seem to all get excited about the same things and they speak a common language in their shared interest.

I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who has an interest in birds or birding. It’s also interesting as a travel story too.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for the advance reader copy I received in exchange for my honest review.

In 2015 the author traveled through 41 countries and 7 continents on his quest to find 5,000 birds in a year long journey.
I have definitely become an armchair birder as I love reading about peoples journeys to track birds, and also watch the ones that live around me. This was a really informative and fun book to read, as it gives us the mindset of a person with a passion to achieve a goal, and not only that of the author, but other birders with as much love of this recreational activity, and what made them get into it.
Before the author left on his year long quest, he had a lot of preparations to do, from one way plane tickets, to searching out birders in each place that he was going, for the company and for the knowledge of the areas that these people could provide. He was so grateful for the interest of so many on making his trip memorable. One can feel what a tight group birders are. He had many exciting adventures along the way and he loved to stay as locally as he could to absorb the whole experience of the areas he visited.
This is a book that even if you are not a birder you could appreciate, it is a wonderful travel memoir.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC of this book.