The Big Year Birding Record

WHO: Tiffany Kersten, a formerly down-on-her-luck Mission resident turned jet-setting, record-breaking bird-watcher.

WHAT: At the end of December, after driving 49,000 miles and hopping on more than than l flights across the country, Kersten, 35, broke the American Birding Association's record for most bird identifications in the lower 48 states within a calendar year.

Known as a Big Year, the daunting project is a little like a self-directed, avian-focused version of The Amazing Race. Kersten saw 726 species, topping the previous high of 724.

WHY It'S Then Dandy: In February of terminal twelvemonth, Tiffany Kersten was unemployed, stressed virtually paying her mortgage, and nevertheless reeling from the emotional distress caused by a sexual attack two years prior. She had recently been let go from her task at the McAllen Nature Center and felt similar she had lost direction.

With no real plans other than trying to make some money, Kersten started guiding small bird-watching tours in South Texas. She'd fallen in love with birds watching sandhill crane mating rituals in Wisconsin at age twelve, and had led sporadic guiding trips over the by ten years. Equally luck would have it, one of her get-go clients was another avid bird-watcher named Charlie Bostwick. Bostwick was in Texas working on a Big Year—birder lingo for the effort to spot as many different species of birds as possible inside a calendar year. As the two traveled around the Rio Grande Valley, looking for green jays and great kiskadees, Kersten told Bostwick well-nigh the transitional period she was in. He suggested that she go for a Big Twelvemonth, too. She was initially reluctant to have on such a daunting project.

"I have a house; I need to get a chore; I demand to get my life in order," Kersten recalls thinking. "I tin can't only run effectually the state looking at birds."

A few weeks after, in a dry out spell betwixt guiding gigs, Kersten went camping in W Texas. On a tight budget, cooking meals on a camp stove, she had a sudden change of centre. If there was ever a time to practise a Large Yr, it was now. So with only five days of clothing, a sleeping bag, and a tent packed into her little purple Chevy Spark, she set off westward across the desert toward California.

Big Years, far from the serene, meditative activities usually associated with bird-watching, are fast-paced, intense, and expensive. Birders follow a checklist compiled by the American Birding Association, a long listing of accepted species reviewed by experts. Just these birds count toward the tape, and bird-watchers end upwardly crisscrossing the United States—not unlike the migratory species they're chasing—equally they attempt to check each i off the list. The first few hundred birds come up hands, but each passing species becomes more difficult. To find the last few dozen, Big Year birders rely on reports from other avian fanatics to chase rare sightings across the country. These seekers often buy aforementioned-day plane tickets, spend hours in airports and rental cars, and sink hundreds of dollars into meals and hotels—all with the knowledge that their feathered quarry could fly away moments before they make it. Only a handful of birders have ever spotted more than 7 hundred different species in the lower 48 states during a Large Twelvemonth.

Big Year birding Tiffany Kersten — Tiffany Kersten in Big Curve National Park. Courtesy of Tiffany Kersten

Greg Neise, a staff member with the American Birding Association, says that's a massive achievement. "Yous make clean up the easy birds throughout the year," he says. "But past the fourth dimension y'all go to mid-November, whatsoever bird you add is going to be extremely rare."

Equally Kersten worked her way west, doubts began to creep in. Online, a woman in the bird-watching community posted about existence sexually assaulted while out birding. The allegations brought back frightening memories for Kersten. But and then, a few days later, an ad for a personal-condom alarm company popped up in her social media feed. It got her thinking: what if her Big Year could be nearly more than just bird-watching? She knew better than anyone the fear that came with traveling alone, birding in remote places. Maybe she could requite these personal alarms to women she met out on the road, raise sensation about women's prophylactic, and do a Big Year all at the same time. Kersten reached out to the warning company, serendipitously called She's Birdie, and launched a fundraising page for the alarms on March eight, International Women's Day.

As Kersten made her way upward the West Declension, she was surprised by the openness of the women she met. Handing out alarms to beau travelers, she sparked conversations near safety, life, and shared experiences. Female birders she connected with on Facebook often offered Kersten a place to stay when she came through town. Meanwhile, bird sightings were coming fast and furious. It all felt right. Kersten spent dozens of nights camped beneath the stars, watching the phases of the moon. She felt like she was healing.

By the end of February, she had ticked off more than four hundred birds. Afterwards chartering a series of fishing boats to detect offshore species, her count grew higher: five hundred birds in March, and so six hundred by the centre of May. On October 2, thanks to a blueish-footed booby spotted off the coast of California, she hit seven hundred. The all-fourth dimension record for identifications in the lower 48 states was 724 species.

"At that point a record wasn't super likely, but information technology was possible," Kersten says.

Exhausted, she began the long journeying home. When Kersten arrived dorsum in Texas, her habitation air-conditioning was broken, she had a ho-hum leak in a tire, and she hadn't seen her dog in weeks. The record was within accomplish, merely at what cost?

The yr hadn't been all bird-watching and beautiful sunsets. Along the way, there were long stretches of isolation and loneliness. Kersten's world had become a loop of unfamiliar places and countless identifications. She spent her birthday on the road in Oregon, searching for a short-tailed albatross. A windstorm in Arizona on Valentine'southward Day forced Kersten to abandon her plan to sleep in her automobile; she eventually institute ane of the few un-booked motels outside of Phoenix.

At present finally dorsum in Texas, she wasn't certain if she wanted to proceed going. Merely inside an hour of arriving home in Mission, her phone lit up with texts from friends in Sacramento and Marin, notifying her of two rare species that had popped up in Northern California. Subsequently two days hemming and hawing, Kersten bought a aforementioned-day ticket back to California. She was going for the record.

The adjacent three months were a blur of airports and travel. Kersten kept booking flights, whizzing back and forth beyond the country. The thrill of seeing new birds morphed into an intense force per unit area. When she finally spotted a species she'd been looking for, at that place was little excitement, just relief.

In Oklahoma on Dec 18, Kersten found a Smith's longspur—her 724th bird of the year. With two weeks left before the end of 2021, she needed only one more bird to break the all-fourth dimension record.

Just so, she got a tip: a bat falcon had been spotted in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge south of McAllen, not thirty minutes from her house, and in the park where she had worked when she first moved to Texas.

Kersten immediately boarded a plane back home, arriving in Texas at 4:30 p.m., with only an hour left of sunlight. The bat falcon had never before been documented in the United States. It seemed impossible that this rare bird, in this identify with such a personal connection, could be the record-breaking species.

She pulled into the wildlife refuge and sprinted from her automobile, rushing past birders every bit she ran down the refuge road toward an observation belfry. When she arrived, the bird was perched peacefully on a dead tree in the thornscrub. Number 725: a new record. (She later snuck in i more sighting, a northern lapwing, in New Jersey, finishing with 726 birds.)

As the solar day faded into a humid Texas night, Kersten realized she was crying. Breaking the record almost felt beside the bespeak.

"It'due south nigh and then much more than than a number," she says. "Traveling solo, connecting with woman birders along the fashion—it's been a life-changing, transformative feel. Merely I'll never, ever do it once again."

In this acceleration from Texas Land Reporter, visit to Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen, a sanctuary for birds, plants, and environmental stewardship.