Word: vardaman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...quest began at precisely one second past midnight on Jan. 1, 1979, when he spotted a barn owl in Florida City, Fla. His mission, admittedly, was in part a wild goose chase, but it was a snowy plover chase and a glossy ibis chase as well. For James Vardaman, 58, had decided that he would spend 1979-from New Year's Day to New Year's Eve-trying to become the first person to sight 700 different species of birds in North America within one year. "Hot damn!" he remembers saying when he thought of the idea. "That...
...owner of a timber management firm in Jackson, Miss., Vardaman consulted ornithologists for the best birding areas around the U.S. He hired local guides to point out species to him. On one memorable January day near Point Reyes, Calif., Vardaman sighted 111 different varieties. Every two weeks he mailed out a newsletter to 1,150 "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...