Mark Obmascik: The Big Year

In the early 19th century, Jean-Jacques Audubon dodged Napoleon's draft, crossed the Atlantic, and became a rotten businessman.

He also became author and illustrator of the great book on North American birds, shooting hundreds of them in the process. Ever since then, the Audubon Society has organised that only-in-America phenomenon, The Great Bird Count.

This entertaining, engaging book follows three bird-junkies as they crisscross the United States, competing to see who can spot the most species in one year. The record is 721, pretty impressive considering there are only 675 home-grown types. So whispers of cheating are on the wing.

Even if you can't tell an eagle from an egret or a tit from a tattler, you can still enjoy this narrative of ornithology as an extreme sport.

Obmascik was a Denver journalist who began writing about the oldest law professor and possibly oldest bird-watcher in the US, then moved on to stories of Baikal Teal in an icecream shop and grouse having sex in the sagebrush. When he tried to go back to other topics, he found himself suffering withdrawal systems. Now his hobby (pale word) is part of his living. Lucky, lucky man.

His disparate threesome are budget-conscious Sandy Komito with his illicit Handicapped Driver car sticker; Al Levantin who gives all his friends bird-feeders for Christmas; and Greg Miller, the nuclear power plant programmer. To beat The Great Bird Count record, they need to spot an average of two new species each day for a year.

So they each spend the equivalent of 12 months' rent as they separately fly to Arizona, drive to California, sail to the Aleutians. They spot in Bodega Bay, where Hitchcock filmed ... wait for it ... The Birds, sprinkling his actors' hair with birdseed to make ravens chase them.

They endure sea-sickness, and mozzies. They get flu and they get into debt. They meet fellow-fanatics in the forms of "pilots and postal workers, boiler mechanics and cardiologists". Some days they're lucky and birds of several feathers flock together. They find the Canada warbler with the greatest of ease; the Siberian accentor with the greatest of skill; the northern wheatear with the greatest of effort.

Obmascik loves his birds and likes his bird-buffs. He pours information over you while he keeps you chortling. His style is speedy, spirited, a bit show-off.

But he knows how to turn sedate description into dynamic narrative (a peregrine falcon — "a big dark bully" — swooping for a late lunch. By the end of the story and the year, you will understand why he is now one of those who look up when someone yells "Duck!"

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.

* Bantam, $26.95