KINGBIRD HIGHWAY is a unique coming-of-age story, combining a lyrical celebration of nature with wild, and sometimes dangerous, adventures, starring a colorful cast of characters. What had been a game became a quest for a deeper understanding of the natural world. His goal was to set a record - most North American species seen in a year - but along the way he began to realize that at this breakneck pace he was only looking, not seeing. When he was broke he would pick fruit or do odd jobs to earn the fifty dollars or so that would last him for weeks.

A report of a rare bird would send him hitching nonstop from Pacific to Atlantic and back again. Maybe not all that unusual a thing to do in the seventies, but what Kenn was searching for was a little different: not sex, drugs, God, or even self, but birds. Kaufman maintains a weblog where he reports bird sightings in the northwest region of Ohio and makes predictions about the spring bird migration.At sixteen, Kenn Kaufman dropped out of the high school where he was student council president and hit the road, hitching back and forth across America, from Alaska to Florida, Maine to Mexico. Today Kenn writes for Birds and Blooms, Bird Watcher's Digest, and works/volunteers at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory. Kaufman resides in Oak Harbor, Ohio with his wife Kimberly. Kingbird Highway is about Kenn Kaufman's 'Big Year.' He aimed to show up at the right habitats at the right moments to bag birds he needed for a record one-year tally. Kaufman also received the ABA Roger Tory Peterson Award in 2008 for a 'lifetime of achievements in promoting the cause of birding.'

In 1992, he was given the Ludlow Griscom Award by the American Birding Association. Subsequently, he focused his work on creating and expanding upon birding field guides.

However, this record included regions like Baja California that are no longer ornithologically considered part of North America and has since been surpassed.His cross-country birding journey, covering some eighty thousand miles, was eventually recorded in a memoir, Kingbird Highway. Three years later, in 1973, he set the record for the most North American bird species seen in one year (671) while participating in a Big Year, a year-long birding competition. At age sixteen, inspired by birding pioneers such as Roger Tory Peterson, he dropped out of high school and began hitchhiking around North America in pursuit of birds. When he was nine, his family moved to Wichita, Kansas, where his fascination with birds intensified. Kenn Kaufman (born 1954) is an American author, artist, naturalist, and conservationist, known for his work on several popular field guides of birds and butterflies in North America.īorn in South Bend, Indiana, Kaufman started birding from the age of six.

Kingbird highway by kenn kaufman