Birding Under the Influence: Cycling Across America in Search of Birds and Recovery

ONE

Another Time

Boarding the ferry, I questioned my purpose; towering clouds threatened rain, and biting wind taunted as it hissed through stacks of lobster traps. As one of just a few passengers on that November morning in 2012, I sought refuge in the cabin and claimed a window seat, my legs bouncing on the balls of my feet while my finger picked at a crack in the adjacent seat. The rumble of the ship’s engines signaled our departure, and my breathing constricted as the heavy craft labored out of the harbor and into the open ocean, the thirty-mile crossing from Hyannis to Nantucket scheduled for two-and-a-half hours.

While the northeastern United States reeled from the devastation that Superstorm Sandy wrought four days earlier, I embarked on a cockamamie quest in the cyclone’s aftermath. The prize I sought was the Northern Lapwing, an iridescent, sandpiper-like bird sporting a whimsical black crest. The species ranges through Europe and Asia, so Nantucket birders surprised everyone when they reported two vagrants—representatives that wandered outside the species’ usual range—on the island late in October 2012. The pair was likely sucked across the Atlantic by Sandy’s gargantuan wind field—it stretched to Scandinavia—and I, a scientific researcher in Boston, hatched plans to travel to Nantucket and view the exotic visitors. If they didn’t fly away before I arrived, then they’d be a wonderful addition to my life list, the collection of bird sightings I’d been accumulating since age seven.

Superstorm fallout had prevented earlier travel, but positive reports persisted and buoyed my hopes as I scrambled to complete experiments and clear my calendar. While all birds are beautiful and beguiling, vagrants elicit a particular excitement because no one knows where they’ll appear and how long they’ll stay. Chasing such transients is an exciting game; they can depart their discovery points at any moment, and the rollercoaster of triumphs and disappointments recalls the sinusoidal cycles of gambling or substance abuse, with dejected birders routinely swearing off chasing vagrants before jumping into the car at the next exciting report. As an alcoholic-addict, I couldn’t refuse a rare bird any more than I could a shot of Jägermeister, a line of cocaine, or a hit of ecstasy.

Northern Lapwing possibilities strumming my serotonergic circuits while Nirvana’s Nevermind blared through my car’s speakers, I sped from Boston to Hyannis in the predawn hours of November 2nd. Unfortunately, the ferry didn’t share my urgency. The boxy boat pushed through waves as efficiently as a 200-ton Twinkie, and I counted the minutes until our arrival, my fear of departed lapwings swelling each second. Great Point Lighthouse eventually came into view on the port-side horizon, and sweeping dunes rose from the waves as we inched toward the island and into the harbor, where the ship docked. I grabbed my backpack, disembarked, and hustled two blocks to the island’s bike shop under strengthening rain. With the local taxi service shut down for the winter and the thought of paying $300 to put my car onto the ferry never having been entertained, my preparatory research had revealed that a bicycle would be my best mode of transport.

Opening the door and stepping inside, I saw a middle-aged man fiddling with a bike. He stood and wiped his greasy hands on a rag.

Can I help you? he asked.

I caught my breath and replied, Yeah, I called yesterday about a rental.

Oh, you. The bird guy, he said. "I can’t believe you came in this weather. Are your lopwangs still here?"

I didn’t bother correcting his pronunciation. Hopefully, I said. They’ve been seen for the last three days, so there’s a good chance.

Well, let’s get you going. Take that one, he said, pointing at a silver-framed hybrid bike. It rolls great and can handle bumps if you go off-road.

I surrendered my credit card, adjusted the seat, and pushed the rental out the door. Thirty-three years old, I hadn’t biked since I graduated college in 2001, so I was curious how the remainder of my pursuit would unfold, especially with twenty-five pounds of gear—binoculars, spotting scope, tripod, camera, and telephoto lens—in my backpack. I mounted up and shoved off, raindrops tapping on my helmet as I wobbled along Broad Street.

Settled in the late seventeenth century, Nantucket grew into a major whaling center in the ensuing decades. The decline of that industry coupled with a massive fire to depopulate the main town by the mid-nineteenth century, and the island sat mostly forgotten until the mid-twentieth, when developers realized it would be an ideal getaway spot for mainlanders. Tourism has sustained the summer sanctuary since, and regulations prohibiting tall buildings and chain restaurants now preserve the island’s rustic charm. Gaining confidence as I pedaled past cutesy boutiques, independent eateries, and weathered, gray- shingled cottages, I rolled out of town and into rural surroundings.

Online reports indicated the lapwings moved around the southwestern side of the island, so I hurried toward Hummock Pond, a marshy area where the pair was seen the previous afternoon. Legs burning and chest heaving after four frantic miles, I turned onto a muddy track and sprinted the final 200 yards to a dead end at an elevated overlook. I dismounted, flipped out the kickstand, and shed my backpack. Three days of anticipation converged as I excavated my binoculars. I took a deep breath to steady my shaking hands and lifted the optics to my eyes.

My gaze sweeping along the far shoreline, I seized on two blobs at the base of the reeds. My heart thumped, and I scrambled to mount my spotting scope on my tripod for a better view. Pointing the scope across the water, I spun the focus wheel and brought two dove-sized birds into focus. Bronzy green above and white below, each sported a dark breast band, a buff face, and a black crest, the last feature punctuating the beautiful bird like a chocolate wafer on the top of an ice cream sundae.

Elation replaced angst in that sweetest instant. Yes! Yes! Yes! I grunted through clenched teeth. Pumping my fists while stomping my feet, I didn’t care that I was splashing mud all over myself. Following two days of forced delay, seventy-five miles in the car, thirty on the boat, and a final four on the bike, this was an unlikely victory, one I’d recount for my birding buddies for as long as I lived.

The rain abated, and my high persisted while I watched and photographed the birds for the next ninety minutes. Lapwings are members of the plover family and grouped with avocets, oystercatchers, sandpipers, godwits, and curlews under the broad umbrella of shorebirds. Dainty and elegant while probing beaches, mudflats, and fields for invertebrate morsels, shorebirds are powerful fliers; long wings propel them forward at high speed, and some species migrate from the Arctic to the southern hemisphere and back each year. It was that evolved endurance that kept the Nantucket lapwings aloft while Sandy blew them across the Atlantic, presumably over several days.

The birds suddenly took flight. Their black-and-white underwings flashed with each flap, and their squeaky calls carried over the windswept landscape. As I watched the pair turn toward the ocean, I was happy the birds were healthy enough to fly but feared they’d disappear before other birders could enjoy them. The pair doubled back over the dunes, and I relaxed when they landed on a muddy island at the other end of the elongated pond. Figuring I’d had my best views, I broke down my gear, loaded my backpack, and returned to my bicycle under renewed rain.

Lapwing-imperative had forced my outgoing pace, but I rode slower after adding them to my life list. Birds appeared along the roadside despite the dreary conditions, and I paused to appreciate a streaky Song Sparrow belting its trademark tune from the top of a roadside bramble. The melody was motivational, and I smiled when I spotted an overhead Great Blue Heron a few minutes later, the behemoth’s rhythmic flaps in phase with my pedal rotations as I cranked along the country lane. In the company of those and other local birds, my return ride to the bike shop was pure joy.

The proprietor greeted me as I burst through the shop door. How’d it go? he asked.

I got ’em! I bellowed.

Great! Woulda been a long ferry ride home without ’em! he said.

I know. I missed the Gray-tailed Tattler, another Eurasian shorebird, that was here on October eighteenth.

His eyes opened wide. This is your second trip from Boston in two weeks. For birds? he asked disbelievingly.

You know it! I didn’t need the bike last time because the tattler was in the harbor. At least, it was until I got here. Just missed it. But that’s how this treasure hunt goes. Find ’em or miss ’em, I’m happy to be outdoors, looking at whatever birds I can find.

My departure time was nearing, so I thanked him for the rental and started toward the ferry. I boarded and flopped into the same seat I occupied on the earlier crossing, my exhausted legs as still as fence posts as the boat pulled away from the dock.

Nantucket fading into the distance, I recalled my successful pursuit of a Broad-billed Sandpiper when I was nineteen. I was interning in an oncology lab at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and I called in sick so I could drive to New York City and view the bird, the Eurasian wanderer found at Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge the previous day. Then there was the time I borrowed my parents’ car to go to a friend’s house overnight—or so they thought. Six hours later, I was looking at a Northern Hawk Owl at the Canadian border. Memorable as those and other chases were, my lapwing encounter felt different.

I’d driven farther and seen rarer birds, I thought, so why do I feel so much better this time?

And then it hit me: the bicycle. I’d used it for only a portion of the chase, but that eight-mile round trip required coordination and commitment that a car never had.

That was a lot of fun! Maybe I’ll buy a bike and start riding it around Boston, looking for birds.

Given the upsides—reduced transportation costs, no-impact exercise—biking and birding seemed a perfect pairing. My mind raced.

Is bicycle-birding a thing? Are there bicycle-birding clubs? Has anyone done a bicycle Big Year? Because that would be the coolest project ever!

A Big Year is an elaborate avian scavenger hunt that runs from January 1st to December 31st and motivates a birder to maximize the number of species observed within a chosen geography. Those constrained by work, family, or finances might undertake a city or county Big Year; those with more free time and money to invest in the adventure might operate at the state, country, or continental level; a privileged few have tackled the entire world. Regardless of the scale and investment, a Big Year is a fun excuse to visit new places and see lots of birds. It’s whatever each birder makes it: a weekend distraction, a year-long purpose, or a life-changing journey.

Among many Big Year variations, the ABA Area—the lower 48 states, all of Canada, and all of Alaska, as defined by the American Birding Association (ABA)—has emerged as the benchmark.* Multiple birders undertake ABA Big Years each year, and these annual campaigns have become incredibly competitive. Though recognition in the birding community is the only prize for whoever observes the most species, some competitors fly up to 200,000 miles and drive another 50,000. The most invested might chase a Caribbean vagrant in Florida one day and a Siberian vagrant in Alaska the next. An ABA Big Year is a fun undertaking irrespective of budget, but the participant with the biggest bank account has a huge advantage. When the cost of last-minute plane tickets is heaped onto that of rental cars, boat trips, hotel rooms, restaurants, professional guides, and organized tours, some Big Year birders spend well over $100,000 on their campaigns. Top finishers were tallying upward of 750 species in the 2012 moment when the idea of the bicycle permutation first struck me.†

As the ferry churned across Nantucket Sound, I couldn’t escape the thought. It was naive and arrogant to think that I, someone with zero cycling experience beyond the day’s lapwing pursuit, could survive a two-wheeled transcontinental odyssey, but the pull of the birds and the romance of the open road were overwhelming. Contemplating the prospect further, I realized the bicycle would be an egalitarian and environmentally sustainable twist on the existing Big Year model; money wouldn’t turn the pedals for me, and my only carbon emissions would be metabolic. Petroleum combustion is a major driver of global warming, so there wouldn’t be an inherent conflict between my travels and the birds I’d seek, many of which are threatened by climate change.

Equity and environmentalism aside, I believed a bicycle Big Year would be an amazing adventure. I’d read Kerouac’s On the Road, Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, and Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway, the last a relatable tale of the author’s 1973 hitchhiking Big Year, and I felt a sudden urge to become a similar protagonist. The task would be herculean, but I knew the journey would present an unparalleled opportunity for perspective and personal growth, the undertaking a chance to redeem the adolescent birding dreams that alcoholism and academia had crushed across two intervening decades.

My imagination persisted during the crossing but flopped when we docked and the steel gangplank slammed down on the concrete loading ramp. That clatter signaled a return to routine and responsibility.

What the hell was I thinking?

Entrenched in my scientific career, I couldn’t convert my biking Big Year dream to reality without obliterating my professional prospects. If I left my research track, then everyone would think I was a failure.

And what if I was injured or killed?

A bicycle Big Year would impact Sonia, my girlfriend of four years, and I wasn’t keen to potentially jeopardize our future together. Even if she gave the journey her blessing, my risk would be hers; subjecting her to constant worry and potentially dire consequences if I was struck by a car would be unfair and selfish.

Great. It’s settled. I can let this ridiculous idea go.

Except I couldn’t. The idea monopolized my thoughts as I drove back to Boston. I parked the car, lugged my gear up the stairs, and pushed through the door to our apartment.

Sonia was snuggled under a blanket on the couch, watching television. Please tell me you found the birds, she said in a pensive voice.

Yep! It was an awesome day, I replied.

Yay! Glad we’ll be celebrating instead of sulking. Motioning toward the kitchen, she continued, I bought ice cream for either outcome!

While she scooped, I recapped my lapwing coup. Sonia was more nature enthusiast than die-hard birder, but she listened attentively, smiling and engaging throughout. It was wonderful to know I’d found a partner who was as invested in my happiness as I was.

Settling into Law and Order reruns with Sonia beside me, I opened my laptop and explored the connection between biking, birding, and Big Years. Google searches revealed Malkolm Boothroyd, a Canadian teenager who, alongside his parents, biked and birded his way through Canada and the lower 48 states in 2007 and 2008. His effort wasn’t an official Big Year because it spanned two calendar years, but he observed 548 species along his family’s 12,000-mile arc. I also read about Jim Royer, a Californian who’d undertaken a formal January-to-December bicycle Big Year in San Luis Obispo County in 2010, that effort netting him 318 species. But as far as I could discern, no one had attempted a bicycle ABA Big Year by the time the idea dawned on me.

Too excited to contain myself, I unleashed my vision on Sonia. We’d recently rewatched The Big Year, a 2011 movie based on Mark Obmascik’s book of the same title, so the premise computed immediately.

Wow! That’s a really cool idea! Biking would be way more interesting than using planes and cars like everyone else.

I was spitballing more than selling, so I was surprised by her enthusiasm. Really? I replied. I thought you’d think I was crazy.

Babe, that ship has sailed, she said, but you’re not ready to trash your career right now, are you? That’s what it’ll take to make a 2013 Big Year happen, right?

She could do the math as well as I. Pulling off a Big Year would require me to leave my research position before January, which we both knew I wouldn’t be able to do. I’d need months to finish ongoing experiments, catalog reagents, write up findings, and hand off projects, and I wasn’t keen to make a hasty, incendiary exit in case the bike trip bombed and I wanted to return to the scientific arena. Likewise, researching a route, managing the logistics, and training would take time.

Yeah, I know. It’s just an idea, I said. I figured I’d put it out there since I can’t get it out of my head.

She replied, No one says you need to. Tuck it away for another time. The birds will be there if you’re ever ready to take the leap.

As usual, she was right. I wasn’t ready to make a life-altering decision, and the end-of-year timing offered the logistical cover to default to the familiar path without feeling spineless. It was, ironically, those calendar considerations that absolved us of discussing how a year-long separation could stress or even potentially destroy our relationship. There were more immediate obstacles in place, so that difficult discussion could wait. Until circumstances changed, Sonia, science, and weekend birding around Boston would be enough.

* Hawaii is part of Oceania, and its avifauna is derived from the South Pacific rather than the Americas. It was therefore excluded from the ABA Area until 2016, when political and conservation considerations suggested reevaluation. This narrative unfolds before that inclusion, so Hawaii will be ignored as per convention at the time.

† Going forward, Big Year will imply the ABA variety unless otherwise qualified.

TWO

The Most Important Experiment

Sleep had proven elusive for weeks, but that night’s tossing and turning were extreme, anxiety antagonizing me as I tried to think about anything but my scientific future. When an electronic throb offered reprieve at five thirty a.m., I donned the same wrinkled shirt and tattered pants as the previous two days, wolfed down a bowl of cereal, and shuffled toward the Red Line station in Davis Square. Sliding doors beckoned me aboard, and I assumed a seat at the vacant end of the car, my tired eyes fixed on the floor as the train departed.

A postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital, I’d spent the previous two-plus years deconstructing synapses, microscopic structures through which neurons communicate. My goal was to identify genes that regulate synapse remodeling, and I hoped my findings would inform research into autism and schizophrenia, cognitive disorders thought to result from remodeling defects. Technically and ethically unable to perform my experiments in Homo sapiens, I turned to Caenorhabditis elegans, a microscopic worm, as a genetic stand-in; its minimal nervous system facilitated structural analysis, and insights I gleaned in the model system were likely to translate to humans because molecular function is conserved across the evolutionary spectrum. With fascinating biology, important health implications, and powerful technology, the project held huge promise when I initiated it in January of 2011.

Dr. Joshua Kaplan, a world-renowned neurobiologist with a parallel academic appointment at Harvard Medical School, was my advisor at Mass General. Josh had a stellar history of training postdocs and placing them into faculty positions, and he shared my optimism that I could leverage a hypothetical remodeling breakthrough into a tenure-track appointment at a reputable research university. I loved performing experiments, advancing our understanding of biology, and sharing my scientific curiosity, and I’d envisioned becoming a professor throughout my four undergraduate years at Stanford, three predoctoral years at Harvard, and six graduate years at New York University. If everything went well on the experimental front at Mass General, then I’d spend five to six years there before starting my own group at another institution.

Unfortunately, the remodeling problem proved more stubborn than either Josh or I imagined. Technical difficulties guaranteed I spent my time troubleshooting, and unanticipated genetic complexity prevented me from obtaining clean and congruous results. Obsessed with experimental design and conduct, I poured myself into the project, my nerves fraying, work hours swelling, and weekends evaporating as I clawed for traction. By the time Sandy barreled up the East Coast in late 2012, I had only frustration to show for nearly two years of work.

Despite those difficulties, Josh and I generated additional hypotheses post-superstorm. I’d be in business if one of them hit, but the first set of potentials yielded nothing. Fears of postdoctoral purgatory gripped me as I nibbled my fingernails to bloody nubs, and I failed to give my relationship the attention it deserved as my scientific focus constricted and the New England winter deepened.

Seated next to me on our sofa in February 2013, gazing into my sagging eyes, Sonia expressed her concerns. You’re killing yourself for an idealized future. It isn’t healthy.

I know, I replied, but I gotta work through this. It’s my only path to success.

She countered, But what’s success worth if it makes you miserable? And it’s affecting me because you’re so negative all the time. Minus the time we’re hiking or birding, it’s like I’m dating Eeyore.

I apologized for my attitude and explained that I was working on a final round of salvage experiments. I summarized, If something pops, then great; if not, then I’m fucked.

As the train pulled into Charles-MGH station at six a.m., it seemed like Earth’s gravity had quadrupled, my shoulders slumping and my feet heavy as I stepped off the train and crossed Cambridge Street. It was late March of 2013, and I’d all but exhausted my final pool of testable hypotheses. Unless the morning’s experiments yielded insight, I’d fold the last two-plus years and begin anew with a different project, a surrender that would lengthen my fellowship to at least eight years and greatly diminish my prospects of securing a faculty position.

I entered my lab, flipped on the lights, and navigated humming machines to reach my bench. Shelves of glass bottles towering above me, I readied my first sample, entered a darkened vault, and placed the slide on the microscope, an attractive green glow filling the room when I flicked on the laser. I placed my exhausted eyes on the oculars and used the attached camera and computer to characterize and quantify the worms’ synapses. The tedious process repeated for eleven additional samples across the next four hours; I begged the data to reveal something interesting.

When I combined the morning’s measurements with those from previous iterations and subjected the pooled data to statistical analysis, I discovered that I’d discovered nothing. Though demoralizing, it was a defeat I’d been anticipating for months. More concerning was the realization that I’d refuted one of the key findings on which my project was based, that genetic condition included in my panel as an extra control. Alone in the dark, staring at numbers on the computer screen, I started hyperventilating.

What the hell is going on? How can I explain the conflict?

Elbows on the desktop, fists tugging at unkempt hair, I rocked back and forth in my chair as I struggled to reconcile the disconnect. I’d performed experiments to replicate the key finding when I joined Josh’s lab—taking up the project without confirming that published and foundational result would have been naive—but I’d since spent thousands of hours perfecting the relevant assay. Confident my optimized protocol had revealed true biology on this latest iteration, I felt my face chill as blood drained from it.

Shit! Shit! Shit! This cannot be happening!

If the older, apparently flawed assay implicated the specified gene in the remodeling process—and I’d based all of my hypotheses on that incorrect conclusion—then my downstream experiments would not be informative.

Goddamn it! Now I know why I haven’t found shit for two years! I’ve been looking in the wrong genetic direction the entire time!

I was devastated. My remodeling project died at that moment. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I heaped dirt onto my lifeless postdoctoral child.

The next week was miserable as I collected myself and considered alternatives. A lateral move into biotechnology would double my salary and halve my stress; alternatively, I could slide into teaching or consulting if I was done with experimentation. Despite those and other possibilities, I couldn’t bring myself to turn away from the research trajectory. I had to achieve my professorial ambition to avoid being perceived as a failure, so I reluctantly readied to reconceive my fellowship around another project. Too insecure, too scared, and too apathetic to fully reinvent myself, I allowed ego and expectation to force me forward even though my experimental spirit had been crushed.

Watching hockey at a local pub with Sonia the following week, I outlined my retooled postdoctoral plans. I have a couple of ideas I’m going to pitch to Josh next week, I explained. None are as exciting as the remodeling project, but I gotta get some positive data flowing.

What does that mean for the next few years? she asked.

More of the same, hopefully with better results.

But you could be right back here, with nothing, in another three or four years?

My pessimistic streak had reached new levels, so I replied, More than likely.

She absorbed that statement without visible emotion. She was like a poker player, silently sizing me up while contemplating her next move. She went all in.

I want you to get out of there, she said.

I knew she was frustrated with my long hours and weekend work, but she hadn’t directly inserted herself until that moment.

And do what? I asked with a forced laugh intended to diffuse sudden tension.

The bicycle Big Year.

I hadn’t