Well, it is fortunate there are only about 10,000 known birds

kw: book reviews, natural history, ornithology, bird watching, bird listing, obsessions

After finishing To See Every Bird on Earth: a Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession by Dan Koeppel, I spent a couple days thinking about it. So now it is late on Christmas day, and I still don't know what to think about someone who has seen a life total of nearly more than 7,500 birds (to date), yet cut himself almost wholly off from his family to do so.

Richard Keoppel, the author's father, is one of the top twelve "Big Listers." Sixty years mostly spent obsessively seeing and listing bird after bird, between periods of a year or two in which his shame kept him from going after any; sixty years of saying, "I'm done, I've seen enough," at 2,000, 3,000, 4,000...

To be a Big Lister means lots of travel. Just to get to the first thousand, one must travel overseas; there are 914 bird species in North America by the latest count. To see 70% or 80% of the species in any area, one must go a few times. At different times of the year. As you might imagine, a Big Lister doesn't have much time for anything else. Most are pretty much failures in the Family Life department.

It took the author decades to come to a kind of peace about bird watching, and listing. Then he could go with his father to Brazil, to witness the sighting of his 7,000th listed species. I find this is the rule; whatever someone's obsession, if you want to relate to that person, you must enter their world. They are unable to leave it.

Thirteen birds. The book's thirteen chapters each begin with an episode from Richard Koeppel's memory, about seeing the species, and the chapter content is woven about the time period in which that particular sighting occurred, usually a period of a few years. From the Brown Thrasher—which got young Richard started birding, and the first he recorded, though the 24th species he could recall seeing—to the Saw-Whet Owl—the smallest owl known, and his 726th—to the Harpy Eagle, #4,706; the tales tell the man.

Researching and writing the articles that make up the book, and taking the journeys that led to the culmination of the research, and the final healing of the relationship, the author developed a fondness for the birds, learned quite a bit of birding lore, met most of today's Big Listers, and came to grips with his own personality and development. Whatever may become of his father, Dan Koeppel has been bettered for it.

For myself, the question arises, "Do I have an obsession that is harming my family?" Being able just to ask the question is helpful.