Noah Strycker is a 31-year-old writer, photographer, and bird man based near Eugene, Oregon. In 2015, during a quest spanning 41 countries and all seven continents, he set a world record by seeing 6,042 species of birds (more than half the birds on Earth) in one calendar year.
He has written three books: Birding Without Borders (2017), a personal account of his epic quest in 2015 to see more than half of the planet’s bird species in a single year; The Thing with Feathers (2014), about the relationships between bird and human behavior; and Among Penguins (2011), describing a summer in an Antarctic field camp. Noah is Associate Editor of Birding magazine and regularly writes for Audubon and other publications. He is a popular commentator on birds, having given hundreds of presentations for natural history groups, festivals, universities, and conventions.
As an on-board ornithologist for expeditions to Antarctica and the high Arctic, Noah has traveled to Earth’s polar regions more than 30 times and is fascinated by the birds of high latitudes. He has also worked on field research projects in Amazonian Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, the Australian Kimberley, the Farallon Islands, Hawaii, Michigan, Florida, and Maine.
Noah graduated on academic scholarship from Oregon State University in 2008 with a degree in Fisheries and Wildlife, minoring in Fine Arts. He was named the American Birding Association’s “Young Birder of the Year” in 2004.
He is also a competitive tennis player and captained the Oregon State team at #1 singles. In the summer of 2011, Noah hiked the entire 2,665-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, averaging about 22 miles per day for four months.
