Kenny Bostick Rosamund Pike Stu Preissler Kevin Pollak Jim Gittelson Joel McHale Barry Loomis JoBeth Williams Computer Birder Eva Bourne Edit Storyline In birding, a Big Year is seeing or hearing as many different species of birds as possible in a calendar year. Edit Details Official Sites: Official site Official site [Japan].
Edit Did You Know? Highway runs along the California Coast. Quotes On Screen Text: Only the facts have been changed. Crazy Credits During the end credits, photos of every bird found by the winner are shown.
Alternate Versions UK BluRay sports an Extended Cut of the film, adding a good six minutes of minor background information on the three main characters and special birds. It also replaces Jack Black's narration of the story with a new narration by John Cleese who also receives a credit in the opening title sequence. Frequently Asked Questions Q: What are the differences between the Theatrical Version and the Extended Cut? Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report this. Stu is now happily retired and Brad is happy man with his new girlfriend Ellie who also has an interest in birding.
The Big Year results are published and Stu phones Brad with the news. Bostick is first with , a new record; Brad comes in second; Stu is fourth. Brad opines that he got more birds, "but we got more everything," as he looks at Ellie, who has come for a weekend visit.
Stu smiles, looking at his wife. The film ends with Brad and Ellie cozily birding together on a rocky coastline, while Brad confesses that birding is no longer the biggest part of his life. Stu, contented in retirement, is hiking with his toddler grandson already enamored by birds in the Rockies. Bostick is on a birding adventure in China , alone and gazing wistfully at a happy couple walking with their newborn child. Principal photography was done from May 3 to July 30, in Vancouver. Jack Black's fall on Attu Island was unscripted. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though made with care and affection for its characters, The Big Year plods along, rarely reaching any comedic heights.
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as a "genial, amusing and somewhat unfathomable". The Big Year was a box office failure, despite the established stars like Martin, Black and Wilson playing the leads. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Big Year Theatrical release poster. This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.
Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. October Learn how and when to remove this template message. New 'Footloose' could dance circles around rivals". Retrieved October 14, Retrieved July 15, His neck was so accustomed to this exercise that it had bulged in size from fourteen and a half inches to seventeen inches. Among birders, this peculiar condition was known as warbler neck -- spending too much time looking up at treetops for darting songbirds. That's when I knew I was hooked. I may not have much interest in birds, but I absolutely love learning about subcultures I never really knew existed.
May 23, Jolina Adams rated it liked it. Really, really enjoyed reading this book! Well written - it was a short easy read. Parts are very funny - we've seen a few of those "birders" when we got to Spring Wings Migratory Bird Festival in Fallon. I understand the appeal of seeing a life list or rare bird. And I like nothing better than a good book in my back yard looking at what flies in, but I just can't wrap my head around why someone would go to such lengths to compete in a Big Year.
Interesting stuff - made me curious to search out Really, really enjoyed reading this book! Interesting stuff - made me curious to search out more information about a Big Day, a Big Year and the folks in this story. Steve Martin is starring in the film adaptation of the book - slated to come out this fall. I think it will be worth the price of the ticket! One of the most wonderful books I have ever read and now want to go right back to the beginning and start again.
I am a bird looker I like searching for them then love looking at them It is a masterpiece Nov 22, Robert rated it really liked it. Liked this book a lot. One of those rare books where really want to see the film. Jun 04, Don Osterhaus rated it it was amazing. I was browsing a nonfiction table at a used book sale a couple of years ago and the cover of The Big Year caught my eye: It was fifty cents.
It was an unlikely purchase. How interesting can a book about bird watching be? Apparently it can be downright compelling. Prac I was browsing a nonfiction table at a used book sale a couple of years ago and the cover of The Big Year caught my eye: The book is the result of interviews that Obmascik had with three birders: The record on January 1, was species recorded in by Sandy Komito.
Think of it as extreme birding. The demands are ridiculous. Climate runs the gamut from tropical to arctic. Terrain ranges from desert to swamp to prairie to woodland to mountain. Beyond that, there are the pelagic birds — avian species that essentially spend their lives at sea. One memorable incident finds Greg Miller, who is prone to motion sickness, missing a pelagic bird sighting because he is throwing up over the side of his boat.
Consider, then, that many of these birds are not permanent residents. They can only be viewed along seasonal migratory routes. Sometimes the window for observation of these species is unreasonably small. And what about travel? What happens when you are in North Carolina and you get a rare bird alert for a sighting in Oregon? How do you get there pronto? How do you pay for it? What about families, friends and careers? The challenges of a big year are formidable. Which brings us back to Without spoiling the end of the story, all three competitors surpass the coveted mark.
Sandy Komito, a hard-nosed, often abrasive building contractor is the reigning champion trying to best his best. Al Levantin is an affable, wealthy retiree. He has considerable resources at his disposal and is more than capable of giving Komito a run for the money. The wild card is Greg Miller. Miller is an overweight computer programmer. He has maxed out six credit cards and borrowed money from his parents to finance this endeavor. He needs to work forty hours a week to almost pay the bills.
This severely cramps his birding style. He can instantly identify virtually all of the species normally found in the United States by their calls. He can reproduce many of those calls as well. The travails of this trio kept me turning the pages. I found myself choosing a favorite and cheering him on. All in all, an enjoyable and satisfying book. What a great book.
It's hard to say what I loved more, the book or the movie. This gives me a renewed sense of hope about nonfiction. Dec 30, Judy rated it really liked it. I have to admit that I'm interested in bird watching--I know, I know, it doesn't fit into my Devil May Care attitude--and always felt that I had a decent life list. That is until I picked this book up. Who knew that there is Competitive Birdwatching?
And A Big Year? That was a completely new concept to me. Apparently you start on January 1st and count the number of bird species that you see during a calendar year. Prior to , the record Big Year was species. In , thr I have to admit that I'm interested in bird watching--I know, I know, it doesn't fit into my Devil May Care attitude--and always felt that I had a decent life list. In , three men, Sandy Komito who held the record , Greg Miller, and Al Levantin found themselves in a neck and neck race to spot the most birds that year. Individually, they traveled thousands of miles from the Dry Tortugas off Florida to Attu in the Aleutian Islands and endured unbelievably harsh conditions in order to score sightings of additional species.
Since North America has only naturally nesting species, the lists had to be augmented with rarities and accidentials--birds that normally were not seen in North America. While the birder I was rooting for didn't win, the winner set a new record with different birds.
A fascinating book about a little known competitive event. I'm never going to view bird watchers the same way again. Jan 15, Jen rated it really liked it. Who knew that competitive birding could be so riveting? Journalistic in style, Obmascik does a great job of making 3 men's quest to be top birder an effort you want to see to the end. Aug 30, Tim Martin rated it really liked it Shelves: More specifically, it was a look at a particular event in the world of birding, a spectacular competitive event called a Big Year, an event in which participants try to see the most species they can in North America north of Mexico during one calendar year.
A Big Year is a very interesting competition with as the author put it "few rules and no referees. Though they often try to photograph the birds they see and often have witnesses with them, they usually just jot down in their notebooks when and where they saw a particular species, forward their totals to the American Birding Association, and hope that their competitors and the birding world believe them. Much of the competition is built upon credibility and honor and once someone is suspected of cheating just one time that person is finished, though cheating or accusations of cheating are quite rare.
Indeed, so strangely honor-bound are the participants that Obmascik recounted several times when the three competitors actually helped one another, alerting each other to rare bird sightings in various parts of the continent and even in some cases showing their competitor the bird in person. Obmascik profiled the three birders who competed that year, interviewing them and visiting the places that they birded in order to win the competition. Each individual had a different starting point to begin their Big Year, had different networks of informants to tell them when rare birds showed up in various parts of the country accidental strays from other parts of the world, be it Asian birds in Alaska, Mexican birds in Texas and the American Southwest, or Caribbean birds in Florida , and had varying types of experience to bring to bear on the competition.
The three Big Year men were Sandy Komito a New Jersey industrial contractor, to many a rather unlikely birder , Greg Miller a nuclear power worker in Maryland who birded deeply in debt and greatly surprised the other two birders who had much greater resources; also the only one of the three to do a Big Year and still work a full-time job , and Al Levantin a semi-retired corporate chief executive who lived in Colorado. The author followed their progress throughout the year and discussed their lives and what had brought them into birding in general and to competing in the Big Year in particular.
Within weeks of his article it became clear that Keith was in fact ten among overall life-listers, the champion having seen birds. My favorite part of the book was the description of the places the three went to and the birds they saw. They went to Attu, "the Holy Grail of serious birders", a "treeless Alaskan spit seventeen hundred miles from Anchorage but just two hundred miles from Russia" to see rare Asian migrants pushed eastward by the region's harsh storms. To check off the rare Baird's sparrow, a secretive bird of native-grass prairie that breeds only in the Northern Great Plains, they had to make a special trip; "[a]mong birders, the Baird's separates the men from the boys.
To add Pacific pelagic birds, the Big Year men had to contend with the highly influential Debi Shearwater formerly Debi Milllichap, who had legally changed her name in honor of a type of seabird , who ran the best pelagic birding charter on the West Coast; if one wanted to see Pacific seabirds, one had to be on her good side and one of the Big Year men wasn't. In order to see the Colima warbler, one had to hike to its only breeding area in the U.
The only place to see otherwise tropical seabirds like the sooty tern and the masked booby was the isolated, desolate Dry Tortugas, arid islands that were once a prison in the Gulf of Mexico. Dec 08, Pat rated it really liked it. I have a new respect for the sport of birding and the people who devote themselves to it.
Now I get to see the movie! This book and the subsequent movie starring Steve Martin was written in order to document what is known to the birding community as a "big year". This effort is simply to observe as many bird species in the continental United States and Canada as possible in a single calender year. I am well acquainted with this effort since I had been the "annual list editor" for "Birding Magazine" for ten years and was responsible for documenting these efforts. This particular adventure took place in and This book and the subsequent movie starring Steve Martin was written in order to document what is known to the birding community as a "big year".
This particular adventure took place in and is written about three birders with very different financial circumstances and temperments. Up until this time there had only been a small handful of people that had been able to identify species during the required timeframe. The unique aspect of this particular year was that four people were successful in this effort. I was the fourth. The book is very special to me because it allows me to relive much of my adventure in since I saw many of the same birds, visited the same places and witnessed each of these individuals on pelagic trips out into the oceans of North America and in remote locations from Alaska to the Dry Tortugas.
Our paths crossed frequently during the year and I enjoyed just being a quiet observer. I did follow one of the three participants closely because he had a website which I found informative, but also very entertaining. The author of this book has a gift for relating the personalities of the participants and also for giving an accurate reflection of the commitment, the focus and the expense involved in such an endeavor.
The beauty in this adventure is not a number, it is to know what it is like to stand on a small spit of land at Point Barrow, Alaska and know that you are standing on the northernmost point of land on the North American continent. It is also the beauty of a short grass prairie at sunrise in the Pawnee Grasslands or Fort Jefferson during a tropical rainstorm or standing at the finish line of the Iditarod.
It is watching the never ending turn of a blue whale next to your puny boat near Monterey or seeing the stark shape of the Panamint Mountains as the sun comes up or the forest of the Uncompahgre Plateau at dusk. It includes getting off an airplane in Phoenix when thermometer is registering degrees while you recall a February day when you are shaving ice off the inside windows of your car with a credit card when it is 42 degrees below zero in some remote corner of Minnesota.
Mark Obmascik is extrememly capable of sharing this adventure with the reader while adding humor to the effort. It is his humor that makes his writing so special to me because when you are traveling hundred of thousands of miles, spending untold amounts of cash, dining out at Circle-K's and sleeping with critters, you somehow lose track of how crazy and funny this is. While a normal American would do a travelogue which might include Yellowstone, the Washington Monument, Yosemite, the St.
Thanks for putting it all in perspective. Big Year, in birding terms, refers to a die-hard birding competition in North America. Seasoned birders spend a year, starting on January 1st, birding as much as possible and racking up as many species as possible of birds seen in North America.
Komito held the previous record, with birds in one year. This book answers the following question: Who are these men and why are they so obsessed with birds?? You'll get a bit of history of the competition, history of the birding passion in North America, and personal history of these competitors, as well as an introduction to some bird species and the areas they are commonly found. You don't have to BE obsessed with birds to really become immersed in this competitive tale.
And you may well be caught up enough to wonder if it might be worth glancing up every once in awhile to check out just what kind of bird is chipping out in your apple trees. I took an ornithology class in college, with a strong birding component - we spent several early mornings a week out in the field learning to identify birds by song, call, chip note, and sight.
I never knew there were so many different kinds of birds all around me. My biggest thrills were my discoveries of the indigo bunting, the rose-breasted grossbeak, and the pileated woodpecker. If you haven't heard of these birds, I highly recommend checking them out. I am a relative neophyte compared to these birders doing their respective Big Years. Still, I can see how the idea would come to take hold of someone.
It was much like that for me when I heard about the Appalachian Trail You think, now that might be a good thing to do. And when people ask you why, you say to them, "why not?