Word: attu
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Birders have a rough rule of thumb for distinguishing between normal and obsessed watchers: the obsessives dream of going to Attu, a bleak Aleutian island 100 miles from Soviet waters and about 1,500 miles from Anchorage. Attu vaguely resembles a penal colony, but it is paradise to birders pining for a flyby of the Siberian rubythroat or other Asian rarities. "We have people who go without any hope of seeing new birds," says Larry Balch, the ABA's president and head of Attour, a service that brings about 65 birders to the island each spring for three weeks. "There...
...birders," as the devotees call themselves, asking them to call him collect with news of rare species in their regions ("Ask for Birdman"). He hired planes and boats and bushwacked through the woods of northern Minnesota. He flew to Alaska four times and spent 14 days on Attu, a bleak island in the Aleutians, where he saw the green sandpiper. On July 27 he surpassed the previous one-year record by spotting bird No. 658, an American woodcock, near a ditch in Chicago. In early December he flew to Texas in successful pursuit of the white-collared seedeater. That brought...