Word: vardaman
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...also has a reputation for hard-nosed competition in listing. Fifteen years ago, only about 75 people had seen 600 birds in North America. Now more than 500 have topped that figure, and 75 have seen 700. James Vardaman, a forest-management executive from Jackson, Miss., spent $45,000 and 170 days trying to see 700 birds during 1979. Vardaman, who called himself an amateur, paid guides and tipsters, jetted off after almost every rarity and ended the year listing 699 birds. Basham broke the 700 mark in 1983, and many birders dream of pushing the total higher...
Christmas came and passed, and Vardaman was still three birds short of 700. Then came word of sightings of three more varieties: a skua in Ocean City, Md., a stripe-headed tanager in Miami and a golden-crowned warbler in Brownsville, Texas. Vardaman dashed to Ocean City on Dec. 28, spotted the skua and was on his way to Florida and Texas when he learned that the birds had flown. He was still tempted to check for himself, but decided otherwise. "To hell with it," he says. "It was New Year's Eve, and I was dead tired...
...Vardaman thus closed the year with 698 sightings. He had spent 170 days and logged 161,331 miles: 137,145 by plane, 20,305 by auto, 3,337 by boat, 384 on foot and 160 on bicycle. His odyssey cost $35,000 and put a strain on his marriage. "I would have sold him for a dime," says his wife Virginia, "when he went off to Alaska and left me for weeks with the kids...
...Vardaman's pell-mell efforts were also ridiculed by leading bird watchers. Les Line, editor of Audubon magazine, complained that Vardaman's venture "has more to do with sport than with nature or the beauty of birds. It's not an appreciation of nature-it's a game." Line likened Vardaman's pursuit to "counting out-of-state license plates...
Such grousing leaves Vardaman un-ruffed. His next project is to sight more than 5,000 varieties of birds around the world in one year. Meanwhile, he can comfort himself with the thought that he did find two more birds of a different feather in 1979. On the last day of the year, a neighbor gave him a bottle of Wild Turkey whisky with a paper bird wired to its neck. That gave him 700 after...