Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder

At 16, Kaufman dropped out of high school and started hitching across America in an effort to see the most birds in a year. "Kingbird Highway" is a unique coming-of-age story, combining a lyrical celebration of nature with wild adventures and some unbelievable characters.
Now revered as one of North America's 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 young man's search for his place in the world.In a new afterword, Kaufman looks at the evolution of bird-listing since his own big year.