Little Big Year: Chasing Acadia's Birds

by Richard Wayne MacDonald

Join field biologist Richard MacDonald on a year-long journey to document the birds of Acadia National Park and Downeast Maine. As you read this book, you’ll feel as though you are sitting in Richard’s living room as he shares his adventures in an easy-to-read story-telling style. With each bird, he relates finding the species while weaving in fun facts and stories from his 40+ years of study, birding, and travel from Newfoundland to Antarctica. Richard relates his introduction to birds through banding ducks as a ten-year-old. The year is bookended with Black-capped Chickadees on a New Year’s Day Schoodic Christmas Bird Count and at the end with Boreal Chickadees. You will go out on research vessels into the Gulf of Maine to look for seabirds, hike the mountains of Acadia to observe Snowy Owls, take a night-time bicycle ride into Great Pond Mountain Wildlands to look for the rare Chuck-will’s-widow, and view shorebirds from the cockpit of a sea kayak. Through it all, you feel as though you are right there with him. Although the book is about birds, it is not just for birders. Anyone with an interest in nature should read this book.

Genres: Birds, Nature

473 pages, Paperback

Published December 8, 2020

Reviews

[Dory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rich MacDonald is a born teacher and his enthusiasm for his subject jumps off of every page. Although his focus is squarely on the birds of his area, he shares from his vast ornithological knowledge on more general bird topics as well: migration, classification, natural history, and so much more. There are some elements that feel a little repetitive and the copy editing could be tighter, but this entertaining, diary-style book is a fun read whether you are an arm-chair novice bird watcher like me or an avid, experienced birder.

[Lorraine Sulick-Morecraft · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spoiler alert - 268 species of birds in a single county of Maine in one year. I consider this an amazing feat of birding as Maine can have harsh winters where one would not expect many birds yet Richard found some amazing species and I was jealous of the list of pelagic, aka oceangoing birds, he had opportunities to see. I look forward to my next visit to coastal Maine and will consider this a great field guide to hotspots!