Noah Strycker
Noah Strycker | |
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 Strycker birding in California in 2014 | |
| Born | February 9, 1986 Eugene, Oregon, U.S. |
Noah Keefer Strycker (born Feb 9, 1986) is an American birdwatcher. In 2015, he set a record for a worldwide Big year of birding, seeing 6,042 of the world's estimated 10,400 bird species in a continuous journey spanning all seven continents from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31.
Background
Born in Eugene, Oregon, he grew up on rural property in the forest outside the small town of Creswell, Oregon. There he watched and photographed birds, learned their habits and calls, and taught himself to find their nests. He is the son of Bob Keefer, an arts writer and photographer, and Lisa Strycker, a data analyst and former journalist.[1]
From 2005 to 2010, he wrote a column titled "Birdboy" for WildBird magazine. He has been Associate Editor of Birding magazine, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association, since 2006.
He graduated magna cum laude in 2008 from Oregon State University with a degree in fisheries and wildlife and a minor in art. Since then, he has studied and observed birds around the world.
In 2011, he solo hiked the entire 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada.[2]
Books
In 2011, Strycker's first book, "Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica," was published by Oregon State University Press. It is a first-person account of a 10-week field job he worked in a remote field camp at Cape Crozier in Antarctica.[3]
His second book, "The Thing With Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What they Reveal about Being Human," was published in 2014 by Riverhead Books. It explores the behaviors of different bird species, with connections to human behavior.
Strycker's third book, "Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest and the Biggest Year in the World" is about his Big Year journey in 2015. It came out in October 2017 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
"Birds of the Photo Ark," a collaboration with photographer Joel Sartore, came out in March 2018 from National Geographic. It features essays by Strycker about birds photographed in captivity by Sartore as part of his Photo Ark project.
The Big Year
Strycker began his worldwide Big Year on January 1, 2015, in Antarctica, aboard the Akademik Ioffe, a former Soviet research vessel now leased by One Ocean Expeditions for adventure tourism. The first bird he saw of the year was a Cape petrel, near Spert Island. From there he traveled up the South and North American continents, across to Europe, throughout Africa, and into Asia and Australia. The trip took him to 42 countries and all seven continents, and was done entirely with a backpack.
On September 16, 2015, near Thattekad, India, he saw a pair of Sri Lanka frogmouths, his 4,342nd bird species of the year, which topped the previous world Big Year record set in 2008 by British birders Alan Davies and Ruth Miller. His final species of the year was a group of Silver-breasted broadbills seen on a return to India, in Assam, putting him at the record breaking total of 6,042 species. This record was later broken in 2016 by Arjan Dwarshuis.[4]
He wrote a book about the adventure for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[5]
References
- ^ http://oregonprogress.oregonstate.edu/fall-2007/profile
- ^ Walker, Tim (27 May 2016). "'There will be birds': Meet Noah Strycker, the world's greatest birdwatcher". The Independent. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
- ^ http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/01/addicted_to_birds_oregon_state.html
- ^ Hurrell, Shaun (9 January 2017). "This man has just broken the record for most bird species seen in a year". BirdLife. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
- ^ https://www.audubon.org/features/birding-without-borders
External links
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