I was saddened to hear that legendary birder Sandy Komito of Fair Lawn died this week. You can read his obituary here:

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/sanford-komito-obituary?id=56209524#obituary

I wrote the following editorial, which features Sandy Komito, for The Record two decades ago. I wrote it
just after the book "The Big Year" came out, but before the movie of the same name. I thought it was relevant today.

With spring on the wing, you'll soon see more and more early birders flocking to their usual haunts at Garret Mountain, Overpeck, and the Meadowlands. Because New Jersey is along the Atlantic Flyway, a major migratory route, it is a birding hot spot. This part of the state is home to several expert birders, but none can compete with Sandy Komito, who makes his roost in Fair Lawn.

Mr. Komito , 72, is one of the stars of the new best-seller "The Big Year," by Mark Obmascik. The slickly written account is the story of birding taken to its most competitive extreme. The year in question is 1998, when Mr. Komito and two other fanatics set out to set the record for the most bird species seen in North America in a year.

The reader soon learns that Mr. Komito is the birding equivalent of the New York Yankees' George Steinbrenner: a brash, relentless champion with incredibly deep pockets. Mr. Komito , usually chatty and jocular, is not too talkative about "The Big Year." One senses that he is not particularly enamored of the book's portrayal of him.

And although the book gives ample glimpses of Mr. Komito 's obsession, it overlooks one of his crazed efforts. At one point, he flies from Newark to Point Barrow, Alaska, to see a Ross' gull, unsuccessfully. So he returns home, only to fly back five weeks later. This time he gets to see his bird - for all of 15 minutes. For those keeping score at home, that's roughly 18,000 miles of travel to spot one bird. All told in 1998, Mr. Komito traveled 270,000 miles and spent roughly $10,000 a month to see more than 700 species of birds.

In birding circles, Mr. Komito was already a legendary figure before "The Big Year" came out. The retired industrial contractor has written and published two accounts of his avian achievements - "Birding's Indiana Jones" and "I Came, I Saw, I Counted." But the new book, with its huge advertising campaign, puts Mr. Komito in a new league.

Part adventure tale, part travelogue, part human-interest story, "The Big Year" has climbed onto the best-seller lists, and film mogul Steven Spielberg has bought the movie rights. It's easy to see the competition as grist for a comedy, as the three competitors - independently of each other - are jetting just about anywhere on the continent to add a bird to their list.

They go to the north woods of Minnesota in search of great gray owls. They battling mosquitoes and low tides in Florida for a glimpse of a flamingo. They bicycle around some God-forsaken island off Alaska, "two time zones from anywhere," in hopes of spying such exotic species as eye-browed thrushes, Mongolian plovers, and pin-tailed snipes.

Think of the story as a sort of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" with beaks and binoculars.

The Big Year of 1998 turned out to be the biggest Big Year in history, and it may stay that way for a while. For one thing, Mr. Komito says his record-setting days are over. For another, the major airlines have changed the way they do business. They no longer sell discount books of eight tickets for $1,000, and post-Sept. 11 security measures make it more difficult to jump on flights at the last minute to track down a report of, say, a Bulwer's petrel off North Carolina. What's more, the Coast Guard base on that remote island off Alaska is closing soon, and with it the access to all sorts of birds from Asia.

Mr. Komito still enthuses about seeing rare birds and about explaining the minutiae of competitive birding. But the book seems to stick in his craw, and the Big Year of 1998 has perhaps lost a bit of its luster.

Why did he ever do the Big Year in the first place? The quick-tongued Mr. Komito doesn't hesitate to reply: "It was a lark."

That's as good an explanation as any as to why birders of every feather will soon grab their binoculars and spotting scopes and look skyward. You don't have to be in the hunt for a Big Year to partake in the exercise, the beauty of nature, and the sense of discovery that comes with a morning walk along a marsh's edge.

It's a lark, all right. Although when taken to the extreme, Mr. Komito would agree, it's even a little cuckoo.

Tomorrrow: An interview with Sandy Komito