Here, we ask Noah a series of birding-related questions…
What led to your passion for birding?
When I was in fifth grade, my teacher suctioncupped a bird feeder to our classroom window and would stop class every time a new visitor showed up. Most of my friends thought it was pretty boring, but I was fascinated by these birds – Evening Grosbeaks, Lazuli Buntings, Purple Finches, Black-capped Chickadees – that seemed to appear from thin air. That spring, I enlisted my dad’s help to build birdhouses for our backyard, and a pair of Western Bluebirds moved in. Peering into their nest, inches away from their sky-blue eggs, I was hooked.
Did you collect other things as well?
I collected and sorted all kinds of miscellanea: stamps, coins, rocks, business cards, even, for a while, cardboard toilet paper rolls, which I carefully stashed under my desk until my mom threw them out. I’ve asked a lot of birders if they collected things when they were younger, and it seems that a disproportionate number of us did. Birding certainly taps into that instinct.
What is the first bird you remember seeing?
I grew up on 20 acres of forest, surrounded by wildlife, so birds have always existed in my consciousness. But one particular sighting stands out. When I was about 13, my dad took me to a remote wildlife refuge in the high desert of eastern Oregon, called Malheur, where I watched a Great Horned Owl pick a fight with a Barred Owl. The two big owls were rolling on the ground in broad daylight, battling over possession of a snake which the Barred had apparently captured. After what seemed like several minutes, the Great Horned emerged victorious and took the snake, while the beat-up Barred Owl cooled off on a perch just a few feet in front of my disbelieving eyes.
What bird haven’t you seen that you’d love to?
The more birds you encounter, the more you realise are out there – and so your bucket list never seems to get shorter! I would love to see the bizarre Wilson’s Bird-of-paradise in Indonesia, the rediscovered Night Parrot in Australia, and the Inaccessible Island Rail (the world’s smallest flightless bird) in Tristan da Cunha. One of my life goals is to observe every penguin species on Earth, which means I’ll have to find a way to reach some of the subantarctic islands around New Zealand.
What is your favourite birdsong?
I’ll tell you my least favourite: the Canyon Wren! Remember when those bird clocks first came out which play a different song at each hour? I got about five of them for Christmas, and put one up in my room. Every morning, that year, I had to wake up at 7am to go to school, and the Canyon Wren was the seven o’clock bird. To this day I can’t hear one without the visceral reaction of an alarm clock – it destroyed that bird’s song for me!
What is your ‘desert island’ piece of kit?
Give me a pair of binoculars, a pair of trousers, and a passport (in case a passing ship is bound for an interesting destination), and I’d be happy.
What camera do you use?
I use two: The Leica V-lux, which is a light superzoom; and a Canon 7D II, with a 100400mm lens. I took the Leica around the world during my Big Year, and use the Canon closer to home.
What are your ideal optics and why?
For binoculars, I just got a pair of Leica Noctivid 10x42s, and they are spectacularly sharp, even in
When I was about 13, my dad took me to a remote wildlife refuge in the high desert of eastern Oregon, called Malheur, where I watched a Great Horned Owl pick a fight with a Barred Owl
low light. I wouldn’t trade them for any other binocular. I appreciate fine optics, but wouldn’t call myself an equipment junkie – I believe in getting good gear, then using it hard. In terms of spotting scopes, I use the Leica Televid 65mm with a 25-50x eyepiece. It’s tack sharp and bright, while being compact enough to fit inside my backpack.
How do you look after your optics?
I try to clean them regularly and pack them in soft clothing while travelling. Often, though, they endure tough conditions – dirt, salt, sunscreen, extreme heat and cold, scrapes, falls etc. During the Big Year, my Leica kit held up to the ultimate field test and they never let me down.
How will you beat your ‘Birding without Borders’ tour? Can you beat it?
In theory, I could fine-tune the Big Year itinerary to squeeze out a few more species, learning from experience. When I planned it, I had a lot of fun plotting the route, calculating how many days to spend in each location, and predicting how things might turn out – because it was a new endeavour, nobody had much idea what was truly possible. But you can never do something again for the first time, and I always knew this would be a once-ina-lifetime trip for me. Rather than attempting another Big Year, I look forward to returning to many of these places on a more relaxed schedule, and pursuing other in-depth projects.
Do you have any favourite moments from that trip?
Many of my favourite memories involve people as much as birds. For instance, when I saw a Tawny Pipit on top of Mount Nemrut, in southern Turkey, it was my 3,000th year bird – and I celebrated it with a birder named Emin who is exactly 18 days younger than me. I had just met him, and it was like finding my Turkish twin! I will never forget standing together on top of that 7,000-foot mountain, which has a panoramic view of south-east Turkey and is capped with 2,000-year-old stone statues, making ridiculous selfie videos in the sunshine to celebrate a little brown bird.
Were there any birds on your tour that you’d hoped to see but didn’t?
Yeah, I missed 4,000 species! My most widespread miss was probably Spotted Redshank. The most heartbreaking miss was definitely the Philippine Eagle, which I made a special effort for on the island of Mindanao. I eventually saw a distant, soaring speck – almost certainly the endangered, monkey-eating eagle on a faraway thermal – but it was just too far to be sure. Birding wouldn’t be so fun if it were always guaranteed; strangely, it’s the misses that make this pursuit so addicting.
If you had to pick one area for birding, what would it be, and why?
The tropics hold the most species, of course, but sheer richness is only one part of birding (just as a list, on its own, says little about its author). For some reason, I’ve always been fascinated by remote and desolate places. The polar regions have particular appeal; I’ve now participated in more than 35 expeditions to the Antarctic and high Arctic, and those trips have put ice in my veins. Something about high latitudes amplifies even mundane details – as if, by simplifying a landscape to its extremes, you can focus better on the life within.
You are obviously fascinated with the connections between man and bird – tell us a bit about that?
You can’t study birds without studying people, the ways we interact, and what birds mean to us. Birding is a very human activity. As far as I know, birds don’t spend premeditated hours watching us, so it says something about
ourselves that we dedicate inordinate time and effort just to glimpse these creatures.
What is the most extraordinary behaviour you’ve seen from a bird?
During a research project studying Adélie Penguins in Antarctica, in order to attach GPS tags to individuals, I had to wrangle some of the penguins at their nests. It’s pretty easy to catch a nesting penguin: You just walk over and pick it up. The birds struggled as I held them, but as soon as I set them down again, they blinked a few times and immediately settled on their nest, as if nothing had happened. It was like an alien had temporarily abducted them and, when returned to Earth, they brushed it off. Who knows what goes through the mind of a penguin? Obviously they are not adapted to land predators, but I still find their trust incredible.
Advice for the young birders of today?
Start a life list, go on field trips, try drawing birds, report your sightings, get a camera with a good zoom, subscribe to magazines, chase rarities, learn how to band [ring] birds, volunteer, study abroad, work on field projects, join your local bird club, give a slide show for one of their meetings. In short, get involved! Everything will lead to new opportunities, but the best thing you can do is go birding for the fun of it. Follow the birds, and they’ll take you places you never even dreamed of.