A former Summit County birder has recorded the second-biggest Big Year ever.
John Vanderpoel, who now lives in Colorado, spotted 744 species of birds in the United States, Canada and Alaska in 2011.
That’s second only to New Jersey’s Sandy Komito’s 745 species in 1998. Komito’s total was a record that some birders thought might never be broken.
But the 62-year-old Vanderpoel came very close.
He spotted 10 bird species in December: in Arizona, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alaska, California, Texas and Quebec. But he missed out on some rare birds in the final months.
“It’s been one huge, wild, crazy ride,” he wrote in a final post on his blog, www.bigyear2011. com.
He called 2011 “a very special year.”
“Of course I’ve enjoyed the satisfaction of successfully planning and strategizing the year and it’s been lots of fun to execute the plan, but that all pales in comparison with the adventures I’ve had and the people I’ve met along this year-long journey,” he wrote.
“My senses came alive in 2011,” Vanderpoel said of his search for birds with names that most people have never heard of. “Truthfully, every new year bird I saw brought excitement throughout the Big Year.”
He was only the 15th birder in the United States to log 700 species on a Big Year.
A Big Year is a 12-month competitive pursuit of birds under loose rules set by the American Birding Association. You can count any birds spotted or heard in the United States and Canada but not Hawaii, the Bahamas, Greenland, Mexico or the Caribbean.
A Big Year relies on the honor system. No witnesses or photographs must be produced as evidence. Birds spotted are listed in notebooks with details. There are no prizes, just the bragging rights.
The Big Year was spawned by noted birder Roger Tory Peterson, who reported in the book Wild America that he had seen 572 species in 1953. It was the subject of a recent film comedy, The Big Year, with Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin. Black portrayed birder Greg Miller of Sugarcreek in Tuscarawas County, who did a Big Year in 1998 and logged 715 species.
About 50 American birders a year do Big Years.
Vanderpoel, who lived in Green from 1988 to 1995, did not embark on his Big Year to set records. He was driven by the chase, by the challenge. His goal was to see 700 species of birds.
In a Dec. 4 interview with the Beacon Journal, Vanderpoel said he’s had “a helluva time. This has been an incredibly exciting thing to do. The adventures will stay with me a lifetime.”
He gave himself a 30 percent chance of breaking Komito’s record, but he admitted doing a Big Year is bit obsessive.
The more birds Vanderpoel saw, the harder his task. He saw nearly all of the 650 species of birds that breed in the United States, Canada and Alaska. That meant he was forced to find rarities from Europe, Asia and Mexico.
“Alaska provided a roller coaster of emotions,” he said. That included successes and failures. In all, he made six trips to Alaska, mostly to islands in hopes of catching rare Asian birds. He got stuck on snowy Adak Island for seven days in December and that crippled his last-minute chasing.
He birded extensively in Alaska, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Arizona and California. He got two birds in Ohio: a cerulean warbler and a European duck.
Vanderpoel, a professional bird videographer, was on the road two out of three days in 2011. His spotted birds in 20 states and four Canadian provinces.
He runs his own company, Peregrine Video Production of Niwot, Colo., which has produced birding videos.
Vanderpoel’s wife, Linda, joined him on three of his bird-chasing trips. “I owe you for this one,” he wrote to her of his Big Year.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.