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Mark Obmascik came to birding while looking for a break from difficult journalism, then followed three competitive birders into a story that became The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession. In Noah Strycker’s American Birding Association interview, published April 14, 2021 (and identified on the page as a March 2021 interview), Obmascik explains how reporting, migration, mountains, war history and repeated identification mistakes changed the way he sees birds.
The interview is a personal account, not a current travel guide or an independent test of Obmascik’s birding ability. His routine, family references and plans below describe what he said in that 2021 conversation.
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How did The Big Year come into being?
Obmascik was a Denver-based journalist searching for a different assignment after spending six months covering the Columbine High School massacre. He was about to move on to a U.S. Senate race when he called the nearby American Birding Association to ask what story opportunities it knew about.
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He did not initially approach the project as a committed birder. He says he was more interested in the birders than in the birds themselves. That outsider’s perspective shaped the book’s appeal: the people’s logistics, rivalries and endurance provide the entry point, while the birds gradually become the subject’s emotional center.
A reporting assignment became a personal education
Time in the field altered Obmascik’s priorities. Following birders made him pay attention to migration and to the geographic chain connecting a bird’s breeding habitat with places where it might be seen later in the year. A sighting was no longer an isolated event. It could be evidence of a much larger movement between seasons and continents.
That change is the interview’s central arc. Obmascik begins as a journalist studying people who pursue birds with extraordinary intensity. He emerges as someone who understands why the birds themselves justify the effort. His concise description of that shift is one of the interview’s most memorable lines: “Birds change the way you look at the world.”
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He had some exposure to birds, but his answer makes clear that he did not begin as an expert field observer. The Big Year put him alongside people whose knowledge, stamina and willingness to travel were far beyond casual backyard watching. Learning in that environment meant accepting uncertainty and paying attention to details he had previously overlooked.
Migration made the subject bigger than a list
Obmascik describes becoming fascinated by the relationship between breeding grounds and later stopovers. A bird seen in one region can be connected to habitat thousands of miles away, and the timing of migration gives each encounter a seasonal context. This perspective helps explain why Big Year competitors were willing to cross enormous distances for a single species: the goal was not simply collecting names, but witnessing a moving, interconnected natural system.
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Mistakes remained part of his birding
Even after writing the book, Obmascik says he struggles with bird songs and sometimes misidentifies birds by sight. He treats those errors as a normal part of participation rather than a reason to stay on the sidelines. “If birds don’t keep you humble, then birding with kids will,” he says, linking his own mistakes with the additional unpredictability of watching birds with children.
His other warning is equally practical: “Birds will always surprise you.” A rare visitor, an unfamiliar call or a fleeting view can overturn a confident assumption. The interview presents that uncertainty as a source of enjoyment, not merely a technical obstacle.
What is Obmascik’s birding routine?
There is no rigid daily schedule in his account. Instead, he describes an informal routine spread across several places and levels of commitment. That distinction matters: the author of a book about an extreme year does not claim to maintain an extreme year-round lifestyle.
Feeders and familiar patches
Obmascik mentions watching feeders and visiting birding patches near family homes outside Chicago and in Vero Beach, Florida. These are accessible, repeatable settings where observation can fit around ordinary life. Returning to the same places also makes seasonal change easier to notice, because the observer develops a baseline for which birds are usually present.
A semi-Big Day in Colorado
Each May, he says, he joins friends for a semi-Big Day on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. A Big Day compresses birding into a single intensive outing; his version is social and deliberately less formal than the competition described in his book. The Eastern Plains setting gives the group a broad landscape and spring migration as the focus, while the “semi” qualification signals that this is not presented as a record attempt.
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Occasional chases, not constant pursuit
He also takes occasional trips around Colorado to chase birds. The interview does not provide a current itinerary, success rate or list of target species. Those omissions are useful context: his comments illustrate a way of staying engaged with birding, not a prescription for where readers should travel or how many species they should expect to find.
How does the film adaptation differ from the book?
Obmascik distinguishes the reporting project from the later film adaptation. The book grew out of his direct work on the three competitors and the broader birding world. The film had to turn that material into a compact dramatic story, with selected characters and a shaped ending.
Greg Miller became a consultant
Obmascik says he asked director David Frankel to bring Greg Miller into the production as a bird-information consultant. Miller’s involvement connected the fictionalized screen version with one of the real competitors whose pursuit had drawn Obmascik to the original story.
The Pink-footed Goose coincidence
According to Obmascik, the film ends with the discovery of a Pink-footed Goose in Colorado. During production, people objected that the species had never been found there, making the ending seem implausible. Obmascik then recounts that a Pink-footed Goose appeared near Frederick, Colorado, in December 2018.
This is his account of the film’s decision and the later sighting, not an independently verified claim about the species’ complete Colorado record. It does, however, capture the kind of improbable event that keeps birding stories from behaving like scripted plots.
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Why did Attu lead to another book?
Research for The Big Year took Obmascik to Attu, an island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain. The location initially mattered for birds, but learning about the World War II battle there redirected his attention toward the people and events of the military campaign. He later pursued that history in The Storm on Our Shores.
A trip where military history came first
Obmascik describes a September trip with a 60 Minutes crew in which military sites and hiking took priority over birding. He recalls seeing Song Sparrows and Lapland Longspurs, and he received help identifying photographs of Spectacled Eider and Red-faced Cormorant. The episode shows how a birding destination can contain overlapping stories: habitat, migration, wartime geography and the human cost of occupying a remote island.
His Attu experience also explains why the interview resists a narrow definition of bird writing. Birds provided the initial route into the landscape, but the landscape led to history, memory and a second book.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What other outdoor challenge did Obmascik undertake?
Obmascik says he attempted to climb all 54 Colorado mountains higher than 14,000 feet in one year, a challenge recounted in Halfway to Heaven. The number belongs to his description of that project; it is not a claim that he completed every ascent within the year.
Mount Lincoln: altitude and close observation
In the interview, he recalls an encounter on Mount Lincoln at 14,286 feet involving a Peregrine Falcon and Brown-capped Rosy-Finch. The scene links his mountaineering and birding interests: even on a high-altitude climb, he remained alert to wildlife, and an unexpected observation could become as memorable as the physical summit.
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The account also reinforces a recurring idea in his work. Birding does not require a single type of landscape. Feeders, prairie roads, coastal islands and high mountains can all become places where attention changes what a person notices.
What can a beginner take from his approach?
Start with repeatable places
Obmascik’s feeders and family-area patches demonstrate that meaningful observation can begin close to home. A familiar location lets you compare seasons and learn the ordinary birds before worrying about rare ones. His routine is an example, not a rule; the interview does not prescribe a particular field guide, binocular model or identification app.
Expect uncertainty
His admitted difficulty with songs and visual identifications makes the learning curve explicit. A wrong guess is information about what to check next. Listening again, noting habitat and comparing several features are more productive than treating confidence as proof.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsUse social birding strategically
The annual Eastern Plains outing shows one way friends can make a demanding day manageable. Group birding distributes observation: one person may notice movement, another recognize a call and someone else keep track of locations. The goal can be companionship and practice rather than a record.
Let the subject expand
Obmascik followed birds into migration science, family routines, mountaineering and war history. Readers can do the same on a smaller scale by asking what a species’ habitat, route or local history reveals. The interview’s lesson is not that every birder should write another book, but that sustained attention often uncovers connections that are invisible during a single glance.
A timeline of the interview’s key events
| Time or setting | Event described by Obmascik |
|---|---|
| After six months covering the Columbine High School massacre | He seeks a new reporting opportunity before moving to a U.S. Senate race. |
| 1998 Big Year story | He learns about Sandy Komito, Al Levantin and Greg Miller competing to find birds across North America. |
| During research for The Big Year | Attu’s World War II history leads him toward the subject of The Storm on Our Shores. |
| One year of mountaineering | He attempts to climb all 54 Colorado peaks above 14,000 feet, later writing about the challenge in Halfway to Heaven. |
| December 2018 | He reports that a Pink-footed Goose appeared near Frederick, Colorado, echoing the film’s ending. |
| March 2021 interview; published April 14, 2021 | Noah Strycker publishes the American Birding Association conversation with Obmascik. |
Why this interview still matters
Obmascik’s story is valuable because it explains both sides of a birding transformation. The journalist first sees a compelling human competition, then learns to value migration, habitat and the birds’ ability to defeat expectations. His routine remains approachable—feeders, local patches, an annual day with friends—even though the book that made him known grew from an extraordinary year of travel.
For readers interested in The Big Year, the interview supplies the origin story: a difficult reporting period, a call to the American Birding Association and three determined competitors. For readers interested in birding itself, it offers a less intimidating message. Expertise is not the absence of mistakes; it is the willingness to keep looking, listening and revising what you thought you saw.
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