Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder

As a birder, I empathized with Kaufman's desire to see rare birds in Aleutians, explore the unknown, and experience the American wilderness through the binocular lens. For those of us who might be apprehensive about dropping out of high school and hitchhiking around the country pursuing our dreams, Kaufman makes it easy. He does it for us. This is the story of a young kid who was obsessed with birds. He left behind a life in small-town American in pursuit of his dreams (meaning to see new birds), and made a niche for himself in the then budding birdwatching sub-culture. On virtually no budget, he managed to navigate his way all around the United States, learning and growing as he traveled, making new friends and seeing wildlife all the while. His writing is gripping. The excitement that he feels in seeing each new bird, meeting Roger Tory Peterson, or having a car stop to pick him up after having walked for hours on a roadside is very real to the reader. This journey transcends the birds that define it, and background discussion make this book accessible to birder and non-birder alike. Perhaps most importantly, Kaufman provides an unconventional model for success. Not everyone has to go through the motions of securing a college degree, going to graduate school, or finding an entry level position someplace and begin climbing the corporate ladder. I wouldn't condone abandoning education, but think that Kaufman's case is useful in that it shows that self-education outside of the classroom can be just as (or more) informative and fulfilling. Kaufman's journey takes him through the full range of human emotion, introduces him to people from all walks of life, and opens up a natural world that a young, lonely kid in Kansas could only dream about. Mixing in some self-deprecating humor, Kaufman's book is both thrilling, and relaxing.

I read this book a couple of years ago ,haven't been writing reviews for long;but thought I would go back to this fine effort.I've read a lot of " road" books by some of the best; such as Heat-Moon,Kerouac,Mc Murtry,Peterson/Fisher,Steinbeck,Teale,Caldwell ;but as good as these were, none were written with the passion and self involvement that Kaufman brings to this book.He didn't set out to roam the country to escape,find himself,to discover the people or country.He set with the purpose of finding as many bird species as he could in one year ; wrote a book about it,and even though the goal was not just to write a book; he produced one that is as good as the "best".As a Birder ,we have all experienced many of the things he did ;but without the endurance,passion and commitment that he did.I thought I experienced cold along the Niagara River looking for Gulls in the Winter;but this was mild compared to sleeping in a car on the East coast when it was "cold as an Eskimo's tomb",eating from a can of cold soup at the ABA onvention,or having "his" scope blown away during a storm while doing the Christmas Bird count.If you like road books;but even more so if you enjoy nature/birding you just gotta read this gem !In my opinion he is right up there with the best of them.

If you're stuck in a boring 9-5 job after having paid your dues with years of higher education, you'll be jealous of Kenn Kaufman's freedom at a young age to do what he wanted, learn what he wanted and lay the groundwork for one of the most successful careers in birding in the U.S.If you're a birder, or at least trying to be a birder, you'll be jealous of the amount of ground Kenn Kaufman covered in the span of a few short years to see and marvel at 100's of birds.If you're a writer, whether published or not, you'll be jealous of Kenn Kaufman's ability to write a such vividly-rendered account of his souped-up travails engaging in one of the most sympathetic pastimes to develop among modern humans, that of birding, contextualized with his growing awareness of the impact of human encroachment on the wilderness as an increasingly serious environmental problem. Whether the story surveys Kaufman's encounters with the awfully unlucky Myrtle Warblers stuck on North Carolina's Outer Banks in the winter of '73, the transplanted Skylarks of the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest, or the migrating warblers stopping for a respite at Fort Jefferson in the Tortugas; or whether Kaufman is birding with his group of friends self-dubbed the "Tucson Five," or enduring the numbing experience of "thumbing" on the road for months on end; he makes you see what he's seeing and feel what he's feeling.Finally, if you're someone who treasures the comforts of a soft pillow at night and a warm, dry roof over your head, you have to admire Kaufman's tenacity in dealing with -- and his almost joyful tolerance of-- bad weather, having to hike for miles before finding that much-needed ride or the 669th bird for his Big Year List, and, especially, the hunger born of a budget that probably didn't quite reach shoe-string level.

I won't repeat what others have summarized about the content of this book. The story appealed to me on many levels. As a birder, it is indeed exciting to read the accounts of the multitudes of species seen. Once you realize that there are hundreds of different birds around you there is an understandible desire to SEE them all. (It's a way of collecting that doesn't require much storage space). As someone who grew up in the post-hitch-hiking era (who would dream of living this way now?), I can experience vicariously a lost way of life. The deepest impression that this book left on me was the transformation within the author from simply wanting to SEE all of the birds to wanting to really KNOW the birds and devote a lifetime to learning and discovery. It is on this level that the author speaks to all of us, for we all find (or hope to find) our own passion.

THE KINGBIRD HIGHWAYI first read Kenn Kaufman's KINGBIRD HIGHWAY, a year and a half ago, on a trip to Churchill, Manitoba. It was such a compelling story, I knew immediately that I had to review it. Although I run the risk now of being the last reviewer in America to cover this book, KINGBIRD HIGHWAY is too good to pass up. It's a cut above anything written so far by an American birder and will surely be regarded as a classic in future years. KINGBIRD HIGHWAY tells the tale of how, at age 16, Kenn Kaufman dropped everything and hit the road in search of birds. It's a remarkable story. There he was: honor student; president of the student council-obviously a gifted kid with a bright future in college. But his overwhelming yearning to learn everything he could about birds could not be suppressed or even postponed. He dropped out of school and began hitchhiking back and forth across the continent, searching for birds and adventure. "I knew that, back at home, kids my age were going back to school," wrote Kaufman. "They had the clang of locker doors in the halls of South High in Wichita, Kansas. I had a nameless mountainside in Arizona, with sunlight streaming down among the pines, and Mexican songbirds moving through the high branches. My former classmates were moving toward their education, no doubt, just as I was moving toward mine, but now I was traveling a road that no one had charted for me . . . and my adventure was beginning." Kaufman learned to survive on pennies a day (he budgeted himself only one dollar a day for food). He sold blood plasma twice a week, for five dollars a pint. He went to temporary employment agencies and would work by the day, until he had $50, then hit the road again. Sleeping outside in all kinds of weather, finding shelter under bridges and overpasses, he followed his unstoppable desire to find birds and learn more about them. He even started eating cat food: "a box of Little Friskies, stuffed in my backpack, could keep me going for days," he wrote. Besides being a great coming of age book and a road adventure yarn, KINGBIRD HIGHWAY provides a remarkable insight into a transitional era in American birding-the early 1970s. At the beginning of that decade, no one had yet reached the 700-species mark in their North American life lists-in fact, only the best birders had passed the 600-species mark. And the record for the most birds seen by a birder in a single year had stood at 598 since 1958, when ace British birder Stuart Keith completed his record-smashing North American big year. In terms of the up-to-date information available for birders, many things had changed by 1971. Informal hotlines had begun springing up across the country. New bird-finding books, such as Jim Lane's guides, were providing intricate instructions on how to find birds in various regions. And, at some birding hotspots, taped telephone messages were providing weekly updated information on rare birds seen loc