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Kenn Kaufman Books

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“...but just four years later, in June 1977, I was to find a pair of Buff-collared Nightjars on territory in the lower canyon... By the time that happened, the Tuscon Five would be only a memory. Ironically, it was I, the transient, who was the only one to wind up living in Tuscon later. The other four scattered to the four different states, and after that May of 1973, never again would all five of us get together. But the brief life span of our little gang was a golden time - a time of discovery and wonder, a time when so many of the birds were still elusive and mysterious to us, a time that would never come again.”

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Book:Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder
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“It is now late August 2005. He has interrupted work on his ninth book to go to Sweden with his beautiful fiancee, Kimberly, and right now he is standing with his Swedish translator, getting ready to deliver a rousing bilingual speech to a crowd of hundreds at a grandstand next to the Baltic Sea. How far will this ride take him? If he had just checked off his bird list and gone home, the ride would have ended long ago. That’s the main thing I’ve learned from the young man I once was and from his still-continuing adventures. Yes, it’s good to go on a quest, but it’s better to go with an open mind. The most significant we find may not be the thing we were seeking. That is what redeems the crazy ambivalence of birding, As trivial as our listing pursuit may be, it gets us out there in the real world, paying attention, hopeful and awake. Any day could be a special day, and probably will be, if we just go out to look.”

Inspirational Life
Book:Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder
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“These travelers would not have considered navigating by the lights below. They looked up at the lights overhead, at the stars arrayed across the black velvet dome of the sky. Those were the reliable guides. Cities, after all, might rise and fall, the the constellations overhead would persist, pointing the way for those who could read the sky.”

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Book:A Season On The Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration
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“But in the early 1970s, we were not birdwatching. We were birding, and that made all the difference. We were out to seek, to discover, to chase, to learn, to find as many different kinds of birds as possible — and, in friendly competition, to try to find more of them than the next birder. We became a community of birders, with the complications that human societies always have; and although it was the birds that had brought us together, our story became a human story after all.”

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Book:Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder
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