The (Big) Year that Flew By: Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record

Los Tarrales Nature Reserve, Suchitepéquez, Guatemala (2016)

When the alarm went off, it took me a few seconds before I realized where I was. Then my thoughts fell into place, and my drowsiness disappeared in one fell swoop. It was two o’clock in the morning. Game time.

My father had come to see me. Wanting to join me at all costs, he had trained for this challenge for months on end. Before his departure, I had called my mother from Colombia. Her voice was full of concern when she told me, Ar, your father has gone mad. He’s been walking up and down the stairs all day. To be fit for your hunt to find some kind of turkey.

Just before he left, disaster struck when he raced up those stairs one more time. He stumbled and tore his calf muscle.

My father is definitely not an emotive guy, so when I saw the tears in his eyes at the Guatemala City airport, I knew there must be more to it than just a torn muscle.

In the middle of the night, while I get into the Toyota Land Cruiser with my guide, John, my father waves me off. When I turn around, I can just see his silver-gray hair being swallowed up by the darkness.

We drive at a walking pace; the road is almost as narrow as the car and riddled with deep mud puddles. The many bumps and potholes cause me to shake back and forth in the back seat. A big branch stretches out across the road, but the driver seems oblivious, and the wood gives way with a loud squeak when it cracks up under the tires. After more than an hour, we finally arrive at a small clearing in the middle of the jungle. The start of the Sendero de Lágrimas, the Path of Tears.

A husky Guatemalan with a machete and headlamp leads us up the steep path that winds its way through the dense vegetation. John’s altimeter reads 1,400 meters. Guans live above 1,900 meters, so be prepared for a tough climb.

I must say this took me aback. It’s like climbing the Euromast about nine times without stairs or railings, through a pitch-dark rainforest.

Ever since I first saw the Horned Guan in a book as a child, I’ve wanted nothing more than to see it in the wild—this huge, black-and-white, gallinaceous animal with pink legs and a velvety black head. The unique bright red horn on his forehead stands straight up, like a raised thumb. These birds can be found only in the remote mountain forests of Guatemala and southern Mexico. Few people have ever seen one in real life. However, in this inhospitable area I am mainly concerned with surviving.

John and the Guatemalan guide are climbing at a murderous pace. I focus on John’s heels, trying to fit my feet exactly into his footprints. I jump over tree roots, climb over fallen trees, and avoid overhanging branches. In spite of being in good condition, I am forced to take a break twice. Resting my hands on my knees, I gasp for air. An hour before dawn, at an altitude of 1,935 meters, I am soaking wet with sweat down to my underpants, completely exhausted.

John points at a pile of dark gunk full of fig seeds.

Fresh poo from the Horned Guan; we’re right on the money.

And now the waiting begins. I forgot to account for the temperature, which is near freezing at this altitude, and soon my teeth are chattering. I long for the first rays of sunlight, but at the moment I see only the beams of light from our headlamps illuminating the ghostly forest. A lava-spewing volcano produces a bright orange glow on the distant horizon. Finally the sun comes up, and I get a bit warmer, shuffling along in the sun’s rays that reach the undergrowth through the dense canopy. We stare tensely at the treetops through our binoculars, looking to spot any movement. A few times we think we hear a guan, but it turns out to be a false alarm every single time.

John says, If he doesn’t show up in the first light of day, we can forget about it.

I look at my cell phone and see that it is almost eight o’clock. I curse under my breath. I can already imagine returning to the lodge empty-handed.

It didn’t work out, Dad. I’m a worthless bird-watcher.

It is past nine o’clock and still no trace of a guan. We split up to increase our chances, but with each passing minute my heart sinks deeper. This isn’t going to happen to me, or is it?

Suddenly, I hear a whistle from somewhere higher up the mountain. This can mean only one thing, and I sprint uphill. When I finally reach our Guatemalan guide, I’m coughing my lungs out. I look up at the treetops filled with hope, but the man shakes his head and nods toward the deep ravine to the left of the trail. Follow me.

We climb down the slope as fast as we can. Branches hit my face, and I keep slipping. The guide moves like a mountain goat, and it is difficult for me to keep up with him. A rock wall blocks our passage. Before I know it, the guide jumps a couple of yards down. All I can think about is the guan’s red horn, and I leap after the guide like a madman, making a rough landing on the rocky soil. I quickly check my ankles, making sure I haven’t broken anything. We sprint farther down. About a hundred yards farther, the guide stops abruptly, and only a bush prevents me from bumping into him at full speed.

Over there!

I see a huge fig tree. My hands tremble when I aim my binoculars at the dark figure half hidden in the canopy. There it is, just as I saw it sixteen years ago in that picture book: the Horned Guan. I breathlessly watch the prehistoric-looking bird, which in turn stares back at its perplexed observer from a thick mossy branch. After fifteen minutes, during which I remove my binoculars from my eyes only to take pictures, he opens his wings and disappears from view for good.

Scheveningen, Netherlands (1986)

Where did this bird madness come from? According to my mother, it started from when I was born. When she walked me around in a pram, I always used to look up at the canopy eyes wide open.

He is such a quiet and observant kid, I’m sure he’s going to be a professor later, she told her friends.

My parents gave me a black-and-white cuddly toy, which, when I started babbling my first words, I named Pica pica. For my seventh birthday, my grandmother gave me Seeing Is Knowing!, an old-fashioned bird book that depicts all the birds that can be observed in the Netherlands. In addition to the Dutch names, this small book also provided the Latin names for all the birds, and this is how I discovered that Pica pica is Latin for magpie. My mother’s prediction seemed to come true. However, many years later, when I failed my master’s thesis in archaeology for the third time in a row, it became painfully clear that I wasn’t cut out for science.

Every child is a nature lover, I am thoroughly convinced of that. And it doesn’t take much to fuel this love. In my case, a small scoop net, a magnifying glass, and a bucket were sufficient. As a young boy, I used my scoop net to empty the neighbor’s pond, making drawings of the water beetles, salamanders, and frogs I captured and made swim around in my mother’s vases at home.

Most of all, I loved the beach, which is a good thing growing up in Scheveningen. Like my friends Willem, Titiaan, and Maurits, I was the proud owner of a push net for shrimp, which we used on most summer days for catching shrimp, sand crabs, and plaice, which we then released in self-made basins made from sand. With each rising tide, our temporary aquarium was taken back by the sea, despite our efforts to reinforce the dikes with sand and shells.

There was great excitement when one of us caught a pipefish in his net, a sinuous, thin fish that somewhat resembles a long-snouted eel. We were completely captivated by this strange animal, and we pulled our parents away from their beach chairs to come and admire our catch.

At that time I already understood that nature is never boring. If you pay attention, you will always see, hear, smell, or feel something surprising, whether you are walking around in a tropical rainforest or in your own backyard.

On a hot summer day in 1995, Titiaan, Willem, and I found a cormorant on the beach. The bird sat on the high-tide line between the seaweed and washed-up debris, suffering from the blazing sun. Until then I had seen cormorants only from a long distance, and then they appeared mostly black, but now I noticed how beautiful its plumage was. His tail and mantle feathers had a sort of oily green sheen, and the distinctive dark feather edges gave him a scaly appearance, like a snake’s skin. That, in combination with his turquoise-blue eyes, made him look somewhat reptilian. He was an adult bird in breeding plumage. Above his legs was a prominent white spot, and his crown and neck were covered with fine, snow-white feathers.

With his mouth open and his eyes half closed, he allowed us to approach him within a yard. I immediately realized that something was wrong, otherwise this shy waterbird would have flown away well before we could come close. We had to catch him and take him to the bird shelter. There was one big problem: How were we going to transport this big bird to the other side of town on our bicycles? Fortunately, my mother was lying on her towel about a hundred yards away, unsuspectingly enjoying her day off. And she had come to the beach in her brand-new Renault Twingo.

In my new car? my mother asked a moment later.

It took some convincing, but eventually she gave in. I caught the cormorant with a towel and put him in a cardboard box that Titiaan had found at a beach club. Together we left in my mother’s car for the bird shelter. After the first 200 yards, the cormorant raised his cloaca above the rim of the box. A thick stream of gray-white gunk sprayed across the back seat, filling the car with a suffocating fishy smell.

I carefully carried the box with the cormorant into the bird shelter.

He doesn’t have long to live, muttered the vet. She carefully lifted the bird from the box and placed him on the table. His head fell down, and his eyes were closed.

He probably swallowed a fishing hook, which caused him to bleed internally …

In the middle of her sentence, the cormorant cramped up. He lifted his head backward and released his last breath with a hissing sound. The three of us, just little boys, stood around the treatment table, feeling completely defeated.

On the way back home, we stared ahead in silence. Through the open roof, I saw a flock of cormorants flying overhead. Titiaan and Willem followed my gaze and saw the V formation just disappearing behind the trees.

They’re like jet pilots flying a lap of honor for their dead friend, Titiaan said.

He couldn’t have said it better.

Scheveningen, Netherlands (2016)

Camilla, my girlfriend, says it’s nerves. The 366-day* journey through forty countries, which starts today, New Year’s Day, has become too much for my usually pretty-strong stomach. Last night, I had to run to the bathroom every half hour. In the early morning, I walk up to the roof terrace for a breath of fresh air. Meanwhile, the fireworks lovers hanging out in Scheveningen have shot all their rockets. Only an occasional stray bang can still be heard from afar, from the center of The Hague. It really and truly is January now. The smoke from the fireworks hangs still in the air and tickles my nostrils. I always hated fireworks, and knowing that tens of millions of euros worth of pollution and noise have just been shot into the air over the Netherlands in just a matter of a few hours only makes my aversion greater. At that moment, a familiar sound arises from one of the nearby backyards. I strain my ears and hear the unmistakable jubilant song of a Common Blackbird. It’s as if this heroic bird wants to show that he has not been deterred by the deafening bangs and flashes of light.

This is the kickoff: Bird species number one is now a fact. 6,042 to go this year to set a new world record.

* I deliberately chose a leap year since it gave me an extra day.

The ringing of the doorbell is the official start of my Big Year, a whole year of birding. It’s New Year’s Day, six o’clock in the morning, and Max is standing at the front door with the car.

Are you ready? he asks Camilla and me, blowing in his hands.

Max will travel with me for the next two and a half months through Asia and New Guinea. We know each other from back in the day when we went to birding camp. I am two years older, and I considered him to be a bit like my younger brother in birding. During his high school years, he temporarily lost his interest in birding. Other hobbies, such as parties and girlfriends, were given priority. I went to study in Groningen, and Max disappeared from view for a long time. A few years ago, he unexpectedly called me to ask if I wanted to go birding again. And while we stood along the shore of the Lake IJsselmeer looking at large rafts of Tufted Ducks and scaups, I talked about my Big Year.

Is it okay if I travel with you for a while? he asked. I could take pictures for you to use in your lectures. He had been particularly fanatical about bird photography lately, and he had always wanted to go and see Southeast Asia.

I had to think about it for a while—we hadn’t spoken in years after all—but after lettting it sink in for a couple of days I finally agreed. We could share the cost of the guides and accommodations and, more important, it would be a lot more fun than traveling on my own.

Many birders across the globe were apprehensive of my plan to start my Big Year in the Netherlands. Wouldn’t it be much better to start somewhere in the rainforest of South America or in Australia? Yet this had been a conscious choice: During the winter months, the Dutch delta accommodates huge concentrations of many different species of geese and ducks. Our country is a great refuge for wintering waders and waterbirds, and I wanted to show this to the rest of the world.

We have a tight schedule that will allow us to see more than a hundred species today, at least in theory. The plan is to make a big tour across the delta, and to drive directly from there to Schiphol.

I’m holding my breath, as it has rained almost continuously for the past two weeks, and every birder knows that birds tend to remain hidden in the pouring rain. But when we arrive at the first birding site at sunrise, there is not a cloud in the sky and no wind at all.

The air is fresh and salty, and I take a deep breath. My nausea from the previous night is gone. The rising sun sets the sky ablaze, and we hear the calls of wigeons, curlews, and Brant Geese all around us. How beautiful nature can be in the Netherlands!

Every species seems to be cooperating today, and by evening we already count 117. However, Camilla’s stomach is not cooperating. It’s as if she has caught my nausea. Her anxiety increases as we get closer to my departure. While we drive to Schiphol, I put my arm around her. I’m going to miss you so much, she whispers as she rests her head on my shoulder.

Schiphol, Netherlands (2006)

After finishing high school, I went on a trip. And by this I don’t mean backpacking through Thailand for a month—I went birding for seven and a half months. I had done several side jobs for almost a year, as a dishwasher, beer seller at concerts, and assistant chef in a cooking studio. The last job was very short-lived, as I didn’t even know how to fry an egg and I drank just one too many beers every night. In the end, I had saved a few thousand euros, and my parents bought me a round-the-world ticket as a reward for my high school degree.

And so it happened that, on January 3, 2006, at the age of nineteen, I walked on the moving sidewalk at Schiphol on the way to my gate. The raspy voice of Bob Marley sounded through the earplugs of my MP3 player: Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. / None but ourselves can free our mind.

I felt as free as a bird while adventure beckoned on the other side of the world.

During that trip I did nothing but birding, from sunrise to sunset. Sabah, the Malay part of Borneo, made an especially deep impression on me. In addition to large numbers of hornbills and other enthralling bird species, such as the Bornean Ground Cuckoo and the Malaysian Rail-babbler, I saw an orangutan for the first time in my life.

Everything radiated beauty, but I also witnessed the consequences of the rubber and palm oil industry. As I traveled by bus from the west to the east coast, I passed seemingly endless rolling hills with palm plantations and logging plains. Occasionally, I could see a huge tree stump standing out among the commercial plantations, it being the only remnant of a 200-foot-tall forest giant. Less than twenty years ago this was all tropical rainforest, with hornbills, orangutans, and even the nearly extinct Sumatran rhinoceros. As I stared out the window and watched this apocalyptic setting pass by me, I wondered if there would be any forest left in ten years’ time.

After a three-month journey through Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand, I arrived in Santiago, the capital of Chile. From there I hitchhiked over the Pan-American Highway to Peru, a journey of nearly 1,600 miles. At nightfall I pitched my tent along the road, in the middle of a bone-dry moonscape. At night it was very quiet, except for a single stray truck. No insects, no wind, no birds. Nothing. I lay on my back on a mat, and I stared at the endless starry sky through the open zip of the tent canvas; the silence was so deafening that I could hear my own heartbeat.

Peru is a true El Dorado for birders. The enormous diversity of landscapes—from the bone-dry Atacama Desert to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes Mountains and the brooding jungles of the Amazon rainforest—are home to more than 1,900 bird species, more than twice as many as in the entirety of Europe.

I ended up staying there for four and a half months. Like the locals, I rode in overcrowded buses and hitchhiked on truck roofs to the most remote corners of the country. Every area I visited brought a series of new bird species.

On my way from the Amazonia lowlands to Cuzco, a city at 3,300 meters altitude, I sat on the roof of a truck that climbed painfully slowly up a dirt road. My legs and buttocks felt sore from constantly sliding over the wooden planks that covered the roof. I shared company with a few Peruvians who were on their way to the city with their merchandise. Like them, I held on tightly to the metal railing so as not to fall off the truck in case of unexpected bumps in the road. To our left, we could see a steep, wooded slope, and to the right a ravine of several hundred yards in depth. We passed a burnt-out bus that had missed the road and ended up in the rocks far below us—a silent witness to a drama that had taken place here. One wrong steering movement by our driver and we, too, would end up down there. I was quite nervous, as I had already watched at least three empty half-liter cans of beer flying out of the open window of the driver’s cabin.

Sitting next to me was Rob, a Dutch birder who had been living in Peru for two years. We had just spent a week birding together at a research station in the Tambopata Nature Reserve. We calculated that we would arrive in Cuzco sometime in the evening, but two flat tires, a roadblock, and an average speed of 15 miles per hour meant that we were only halfway there by sunset. Around midnight, we finally reached the mountain pass at 4,000 meters. The temperature was well below freezing, and Rob and I still sat on the exposed roof, shivering with cold.

Would James Clements have experienced anything like this in his Big Year?

I looked at him questioningly. Who is James Clements, and what is a Big Year?

Rob told me about the American ornithologist who set the world record for birding in 1989: He traveled around the world for a year, visited all continents except for Antarctica, and watched 3,662 bird species. No one has ever done this after him.

A Big Year … those words had a magical ring to them. Birding was my great passion, so what could be more beautiful than nonstop birding around the world for 365 days? Countless species that, so far, I had seen only in bird books; new cultures, languages, and tastes; and the most beautiful natural areas in the world. A whole year long. If this American could do it, I could do it! This could become the great adventure that would put me on the map as a birder. And there, in the dead of night, blue-lipped from the cold in the Peruvian Andes, I decided that someday I would become the Big Year world record holder.

Schiphol, Netherlands (2016)

I can see how hard it is for my mother to say goodbye to me.

I’ll be careful, Mom, I promise.

My father puts his arms around me.

Whatever happens, always hold on to the railing.

I hug them extra tight. Without my parents, this whole adventure would not have been possible, I’m fully aware of that. They have always supported me in my hobby, through thick and thin and unconditionally. Birding was the main theme of our family vacations, even though they weren’t birders themselves. If I came home an hour late for dinner because I had been listening to a nightingale singing in the dunes, it wasn’t an issue. In fact, the following evening my father would join me. When I came home from high school as a thirteen-year-old, deeply distressed because I was being bullied for my hobby, my mother said, Ignore them, Arjan. They’re only jealous. After which she put on her coat before heading to the front door. Come on, grab your binoculars. We’re going to the Oostvaardersplassen Nature Reserve.

After checking in for my flight, I hug my parents one more time and plant a kiss on Camilla’s forehead. I say that I will see her again during my stopover in the Netherlands on April 1. Then I get a lump in my throat and bite my lip to hold back my tears, as it will take three months, ten countries, and forty flights before I will see her again, and then only fleetingly. I consider myself lucky to have found someone with the same love for birds, who understands better than anyone else that I have to do this, and who respects and appreciates me for it. I realize all too well what I’m risking with this adventure: A year is a long time, during which so many things can go wrong.

As Max and I walk to the boarding gate, all kinds of thoughts race through my head. Will I remain healthy throughout the year? Will all my flights run smoothly? Will my relationship last, or will it be too much for Camilla? Am I going to break the record? But then I put on my headphones and, just like ten years ago, I’m listening to the voice of Bob Marley: Won’t you help to sing / these songs of freedom!

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. My Big Year is starting for real now.

Scheveningen, Netherlands (2014)

One day in September, I had dinner with my parents.

The idea of a Big Year had been whizzing through my mind ever since, on the roof of that truck in Peru, Rob told me about Clements’s record. In 2008 a British couple, Ruth Miller and Alan Davies, did a world Big Year, and I had followed their progress closely. At the end of their year, they set the new world record at 4,341 species. This made me only more motivated to undertake such a Big Year myself someday.

If I was going to do it, it had to be done quickly. If I waited a few more years, such an endeavor might be impossible due to circumstances, such as a family or a job. It was kind of now or never.

While my mother put the food on the table, I casually disclosed my plans: how Clements, in 1989, observed 3,662 bird species in the span of one year; how Ruth and Alan broke that record; and how I wanted to use my attempt to break this record, write a book, and gain recognition in the birding world, so that I would eventually be able to turn my hobby into my job.

You should see it as a kind of investment.

With that sentence I concluded my sales pitch.

Traveling for a year—that’s a very long time, uttered my mother. But if this is your dream, then we won’t stop you.

I could do the back office from home, my father said enthusiastically. He had retired a year earlier, and it was clear that he had found a project to get into.

I looked at them perplexedly. So you think it’s a good idea?

My parents nodded.

This was unbelievable, I expected that they would call me crazy, but the opposite turned out to be the case. I should have known: When it came to my love for birds, my parents were always there for me.

That same evening I posted a tweet sharing my plans. I hadn’t the