Brookline Bird Club

March 30 was the annual meeting of the Ocean State Bird Club. Although I go to most of our monthly meetings of the Narragansett Surfcasters, I'd never been to a bird club meeting. Before the meeting, there is an hour for refreshments. During this time I was chitchatting with people I knew. We got on the subject of books about birds/birders. Two books I had never heard of were "Lost Among the Birds" by Neil Hayward and "Birding without Borders" by Noah Strycker were mentioned. Both sounded interesting to me and I had not read a book in a long time. I ordered both that night.

Neil's book is about his "Big Year" in 2013. He broke the record for the most birds seen in North America that year. He really didn't plan on doing a Big Year. He wasn't working, loved birds and realized in April he had seen so many birds already he should try to see how many he would get.

Noah traveled the entire world in a year to see if he could see 5000 birds. There are roughly 10,400 birds in the world and he was shooting for half. He ended up seeing 6042 species of birds. He never went home during the year.

Flash forward back to last week. Both books came in on Thursday. I started with Neil's book first. He lives in Massachusetts so I owed him that. Also, it was the book I wanted to read more. I started devouring the book every chance I got. Laurie and I went to Race Point Friday and Saturday. She also came over on Sunday and Tuesday or I'd surely be done with it. 

I subscribe to an email list called MASSBIRD (it is all capitol letters). On Monday I got an email from the Brookline Bird Club (BBC) through the server. Neil Hayward is now the president and they were having their quarterly meeting on April 11. The keynote speaker was (can you guess?) Noah Strycker! What are the odds that the two authors of the books I just bought would be in Cambridge a week after I got them in! The public is welcome. You don't have to be a member to go to a meeting. 

Bad picture of a slide. This is the
amount of guidbooks Noah
needed to prepare for his
round the world quest

I sent Neil Hayward and email asking if he would sign my book if I brought it (if I could make it). He happily responded that he would sign my book. I asked Laurie to go and she said yes. It took  one hour and forty minutes to make it to Harvard and the presentation. 

The club does their business stuff first then the speaker goes on. Noah Strycker was awesome. Besides having pictures of birds from around the world and a million stories, he was extremely entertaining. He talked for an hour then took questions. He made the audience of bird nerds laugh multiple times.

I had gotten Noah to sign my book before his presentation. I had to wait till the end to get Neil Hayward to sign the other one. Neil is British and still has the accent. In his book, he mentions crippling shyness as a kid and even as an adult, never knows what to say when trying to carry on "small talk". However, when he was signing my book he answered my couple of birding questions.

Lets put it this way, Laurie, who is not a birder, enjoyed herself. It was a fun night.