Now revered as one of North Americas top birders, Kenn Kaufman hit the road at age sixteen and spent a year crisscrossing the country to see as many birds as he could, in a birding competition known as a big year. In what has become a classic among birders, this memoir chronicles the subculture of birding in the 1970s and a teenagers search for his place in the world. In a new afterword, Kaufman looks at the evolution of bird-listing since his own big year.