Chasing Birds across Texas: A Birding Big Year (Volume 35) (Louise Lindsey Merrick Natural Environment Series)

On the morning of January 1, 2000, Mark T. Adams started counting birds. His goal was to find the largest possible number of species in one year in Texas, an undertaking known in birding parlance as a Big Year. By the evening of December 31, he had tied the record of 489 species seen or heard within the state’s borders in a single calendar year. Traveling 30,000 miles across Texas by car and 18,000 miles by plane, Adams alone saw 92 percent of all bird species reported in the state in 2000.

In Chasing Birds across Texas, Adams invites birders and others with a broad interest in the outdoors to join him in exploring Texas’ varied habitats on his quest for birds—from the upper coast to the lower coast; into the Hill Country, the Panhandle, and the Chihuahuan Desert; and up the Davis, Chisos, and Guadalupe Mountains. As he happily celebrates the bounty of the Valley’s spring migration or desperately searches for a Panhandle rarity, we watch him grow as a naturalist, exult in the Texas landscape, and benefit from the company of some of the world’s best birders.

Informative, inspiring, and great fun, Chasing Birds across Texas conveys as perhaps no other bird book can the humor, obsession, dedication, and adventure that are all part of the sport of birding.

Mark T. Adams is an astronomer by trade and works at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. He serves as subregional director for the Trans-Pecos for North American Birds, published by the American Birding Association, and conducts Breeding Bird Survey counts for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.