A Big Year is an informal competition among North American birders to see who can see or hear the largest number of species of birds within a single calendar year and within a specific geographical area. A big year may done within a single US state, within the lower 48 continental U.S. states, or within the American Birding Association area (i.e. the 49 continental U.S. states, Canada and the French islands St. Pierre and Miquelon, plus surrounding waters).

History

In 1953, Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher, took a 30,000 mile road trip visiting the wild places of North America. In 1955, they told the story of their travels in a book and a documentary film, both called Wild America. In one of the footnotes to the book Peterson said "My year's list at the end of 1953 was 572 species." The big year had been born. In 1956 the bar was raised when a twenty-five year old Englishman named Stuart Keith , following Peterson and Fisher's route, compiled a list of 598 species.

Keith's record stood for 15 years. In 1971 eighteen year old Ted Parker , in his last semester of high school in southeastern Pennsylvannia , birded the eastern seaboard of North America extensively. That September, Parker enrolled in the University of Arizona in Tucson and found dozens of Southwestern U.S. and Pacific coast specialities. He ended the year with a list of 626 species. (Before his death in 1993, Parker went on to become one of the world's most renowned field ornithologists, and the acknowledged leading expert on the birds of the American tropics.)

The big year of 1998 was the subject of a popular book of the same name by Mark Obmascik . In that year three different birders, Sandy Komito, Al Levantin and Greg Miller, chased the record of 721 birds, held by Komito. In the end Sandy Komito kept his record, listing an astonishing 748 birds, a record many in the birding community believe might never be broken.