Nature Done Wright

Sandy Komito. Credit:  Courtesy of the Louis Suburban Chapel.

My new column for The Record and Herald-News is about the noted North Jersey birder Sandy Komito, who died earlier this month.

You can read it here:

Former North Jersey resident gained notoriety for his birding

By Jim Wright

Special to The Record | USA TODAY NETWORK – NEW JERSEY

   The birding world lost a legend this month when long-time North Jersey resident Sandy Komito died at age 93 in Florida.

   Sandy, a devout birder, gained notoriety several times during the second half of his life, mostly from a competition known as the Big Year. The object, as you may know, is to see the most bird species in one geographical region during one calendar year.   Sandy won the North American competition in its second year, 1987, with 727 species.

   Eleven years later, Komito and two other birders tried to top that record, with Komito ultimately seeing the most species –- 748 in all. He traveled 270,000 miles and spent roughly $10,000 a month to see all those birds, back in the days before eBird and digital rare bird alerts were a few cellphone clicks away.

   Komito published a book about his exploits, “I Came, I Saw, I Counted,” which he sold when he gave talks to local birding groups. His book was soon overshadowed by journalist Mark Obmascik’s best-seller “The Big Year,” a slickly written account of the competition. 

   Sandy was depicted as the birding equivalent of the New York Yankee boss George Steinbrenner –- a brash, relentless champion with deep pockets -– while Sandy’s endearing traits got tossed to the wayside. 

   Sandy put it this way, graciously, at the time: “Obmascik’s a fine writer but he never lets facts get in the way of a good story…”

   Although the book gave ample glimpses of Komito 's obsession, it overlooked perhaps the most amazing of his 1998 exploits. He flew from North Jersey to Point Barrow, Alaska, to see a Ross' gull, but failed. He returned home to Fair Lawn and flew back five weeks later. This time he saw the bird — for 15 minutes. He traveled roughly 18,000 miles to observe one bird.    

   Then came the movie “The Big Year,” featuring Owen Wilson as Kenny Bostick, a fictionalized version of Komito from the Obmascik book, and Sandy cringed all over again.

   “I don’t even want to see the movie because the reviewer says my character will lie, cheat or do anything to see a bird, and that’s a heck of a thing to say,” Sandy told me. “I’ve spent a lifetime to earn a sterling reputation. I’ve never done any such thing. In fact, even when there’s a question, my standards are so high that I wouldn’t count a bird.“

   Just after Sandy died, a friend of his in Florida sent me a PDF with page after page of photos of him smiling broadly as he posed with his birding buddies down there. 

   I’ve always believed that Sandy never got the credit he deserved for setting an incredible record –- twice -– and it warmed my heart to see Sandy so happy in his later years.

   Sandy is buried in Saddle Brook.

The Bird Watcher column appears every other Thursday. Email Jim at celeryfarm@gmail.com.