Luke Dempsey - A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All

Praise for A Supremely Bad Idea

So much fun to readpure enjoyment and full of laughs.

New York Post

[A] riotously funny, utterly enthralling debut book The frustrations, the elation and the sometimes-frayed relations along the way have the brilliant feel of Bill Bryson, mixing humorous observation, pathos and insight. Along with the laugh-out-loudmoments, woven into the tapestry is British-born Dempseys deepening love and wonderment at his adopted land Might as well say it: Dempseys a hoot.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Supremely entertaining, engaging and even inspirational reading. Good fun.

Daily Herald

Refreshingly irreverent Whether youre a die-hard birder or cant distinguish a dove from an osprey, youll enjoy this book.

Audubon magazine

Dempsey tells hilarious stories of birding with two friends in Arizona, Florida, and other states and skillfully weaves in a touching personal narrative.

Birders World

Dempsey succeeds where few authors do. He masterfully shows how a few chance encounters can transform a seemingly normal guy (or gal) into someone obsessed with birds. Dempsey chronicles a series of adventures and misadventures that perhaps better capture what birding means in 2008 than any other book. His success might stem from his ability to seamlessly intertwine history and social book.

WildBird

A gentle, contemplative memoir punctuated by frequent bursts of hilarity and weirdness. At some points, the book reads like a cross between Bill Bryson and Dave Barry (or perhaps Patrick McManus), and thats a very good thing, indeed.

Booklist

Informative and engagingly partisan imbued with [Dempseys] appreciation of the wonders, beauty, and fragility of the natural world.

Library Journal

Dempsey proves to be that rara avis, a witty birder.

Kirkus Reviews

THREE MAD BIRDERS AND THEIR QUEST TO SEE IT ALL

Luke Dempsey

Copyright 2008 by Luke Dempsey

All rights reserved.
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

PHOTO CREDITS

Don and Donna Graffiti: elegant trogon, heron, Kirtlands warbler. Donna
Graffiti: eastern meadowlark, Luke and David, osprey, stakeout, employee of the
month. Don Graffiti: marbled godwit, Pawnee grasslands. The author:
hummingbird, green jay, ptarmigan, caracara.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Dempsey, Luke.
A supremely bad idea : three mad birders and their quest to see it all/
Luke Dempsey.1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59691-355-4 (hardcover)
1. Bird watchingUnited StatesAnecdotes. 2. Dempsey, Luke. I. Title.
QL682.D46 2008
598.0723473dc22
2008017683

First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2008
This e-book edition published in 2011

eISBN: 978-1-60819-668-5

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

IN MEMORIAM

Vincent Dempsey

19351990

Please note that some names and places and times have been changed. But we saw all the birds we said we did. Honest.

for Lily, David, Amelia, and Deborah

I grew up in England, a small country near Ireland where we all love the queen and the sun dont shine. Because of the lousy weather and the unfair distribution of wealth, the place is filled with sad people with not much going for them. My homeland has a strong tradition, however, of inventing safe pursuits for all the losers. We gave the world trainspotting, of course, in which the numbers stenciled on the sides of rolling stock are fervidly scribbled in dirty little notebooks by overcoated men (trainspotters are mostly men). Arrive at any railroad station in England, and a small army of such be-dandruffed homunculi will be huddled at the end of the platform, gently jostling with each other for position so that they can be the first to write down the trains digits. When you do this only at one station, youre called either a veg or a stoat. When you have a passion for just one kind of train, youre a crank. And when you ask me to join you in your trainspotting, I shall say no and run away.

If trains dont do it for you, sad little Britisher, theres always Morris dancing, in which grown men (and women this time) affix bells to their knees and wave little white handkerchiefs, all the while performing a square dance mixed with the hokey pokey. My intensive research suggests that you really need to sport a full beard to be an effective Morris dancerespecially if youre female.

But if dancing sounds too much like hard work, you could always turn on the TV and watch sheep dog trialing, an endeavor in which smart border collies run scared little lambs through gates and over fences. One Man and His Dog, the prime-time BBC series which featured the sport, ran for twenty-three years, attracting upwards of eight million viewers in the early 1980s. In a population of around fifty-six million at the time, thats one in every seven Brits who regularly tuned in.

Birdwatching in England is part of that proud heritagethe word birdwatcher is a synonym for completely unshaggableand it is generally thought of as an exercise for older folks who arent physically able to play sports anymore, or else never did. If you set aside the attendant social stigma, twitching, as birdwatching is also called, has its merits: Its harmless enough (unlike Morris dancing), and it gets you out of the house. It also has a social use for younger people, keeping those nerdy kids who have no chance of ever making a real friend out of already overcrowded bars and the like.

Back when I lived in England, I had plenty of real friends, you understand, but during my teen years I did spend a lot of time alone in the fields that surrounded my village in the north Midlands. It was there, when I was about seventeen or eighteen years old, that I saw a gray heron, the equivalent of the great blue heron here, way off in the misty distance. I understood instantly that it was a beautiful thing; but I was so embarrassed about my feelings that I dared not tell anyone I saw it.

Here in the United States, the pursuit of birds is not considered much sexier, though the use of the word birder instead of birdwatcher connotes a more active participation, I suppose, a veneer of science and perhaps adventure. Still, I met one once, in Central Park, about a week after I moved here. She was rocking back and forth a little bit, and there was dandruff on her mustache.

And bathing? It wasnt clear to me that she was entirely averse to it. No, I wouldnt say that at all.