Newswise — ITHACA, N.Y. – Actors Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin go on a one-year search for birds in the upcoming comedy film, “The Big Year.” The movie, which debuts in the United States on Oct. 14, includes 18 sounds from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library, the world’s largest collection of animal sounds.
While the film is based on the book “The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession,” by Mark Obmascik, the reality is that thousands of birders every year embark on “Big Days” – friendly, sporting contests to find the most bird species in a given location at a given time frame. Beyond simple obsession, such events have raised millions of dollars for bird conservation and contribute valuable data on birds.
Several members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithlogy’s Team Sapsucker, the North American “Big Day” record-holders, are available for media interiews:
Chris Wood, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project Leader for eBird
Chris Wood is a leading authority on bird identification and distribution in North America. Wood has been a long-time participant of the World Series of Birding and has won first place trophies as a member of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Team Sapsucker. He holds all-time species-viewing records for the United States with 264, and hold state records in Colorado and Texas. He is the project leader for eBird, an online bird checklist project that gathers millions of bird observations to provide real-time information on bird abundance and distribution. He conducts field observations and leads trips each year for the bird watching tour company WINGS, based in Arizona. Wood serves as photo quiz editor for Birding magazine and as editor for the online bird quizzes hosted by the American Birding Association. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Ripon College, Ripon, Wis., and a master’s degree from the School of Public and Environmental Policy at Indiana University.
Jessie Barry, Cornell Lab or Ornithology, Merlin Project Leader
Jessie Barry leads the development of Merlin, a new online tool that will use artificial intelligence to help people identify the birds they've seen. Jessie has been participating in Big Days since she was a teenager and recently accomplished her dream of setting the national Big Day record. She has participated in more than 20 Big Days in four states (Texas, New York, New Jersey and Washington), breaking the 200 species mark on five occasions. She has done fieldwork from Alaska to the Amazon and particularly enjoys studying waterfowl. Barry earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington. For several years, Barry worked as the assistant curator of the audio collection in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds. Along with Chris, Jessie hosts the Lab's birding video series called Inside Birding.
Marshall Iliff, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project Leader for eBird
Iliff has been an avid naturalist since a very young age. His interest includes bird identification, occurrence patterns, migration and natural history. Marshall has done Big Days from coast to coast, and has had 200-plus, species-viewed days in Maryland, California, Texas and New Jersey. Although his former Massachusetts record 191 was recently improved to 193, he still holds all-time records for Maryland and Texas (Cornell’s Team Sapsucker in 2011). Iliff holds national records for the months of August, April and May. He has worked various field jobs around the country, including creating atlas locations for breeding birds in Nevada and studying migration on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Iliff worked as an international birding tour guide for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, leading bird watching groups across the United States, Mexico, Belize, Panama, Trinidad, Kenya, and Greenland. Iliff earned his bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.
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