Sept 26, 2024: Birding Under the Influence: Cycling across America in Search of Birds and Recovery

On January 1, 2014, Dorian Anderson boarded his bicycle for the adventure of a lifetime. His two-wheeled journey was an eco-friendly twist on the Big Year, a project during which a birdwatcher tries to observe as many species as possible during a calendar year. While his predecessors utilized cars, planes, and boats, Anderson’s goal was to replicate their transcontinental travels without the use of petroleum, a herculean challenge no one before him had accepted. He ultimately survived subzero temperatures, drifting snow, gusting winds, lightning storms, mountainous ascents, dog attacks, crumbling roads, and several accidents. By December 31, he’d amassed 618 bird species across 18,000 miles of riding, totals no one imagined possible when he set off with zero cycling experience.

Anderson will speak about the genesis of his bike-birding project, provide a thrilling recount of his travels, highlight the birds he saw, and reveal how his adventure changed his life. His personality and enthusiasm are infectious, and his tales of birding, cycling, and self-discovery will inspire others to venture into the outdoors, take note of the birds around them, and make positive changes in their own lives.

Bio
Dorian started birding in his Philadelphia backyard at age seven. His interest spread to the Jersey Shore during his preteen years, and he attended several of Victor Emanuel’s youth birding camps as a teenager. He envisioned himself as an ornithologist until his educational rise and coincident alcoholism extinguished his birding desire. With his focus split between molecular biology and drinking through his twenties, his childhood passion laid comatose, rediscovered only when he got sober at age thirty.

Despite constant blackout drinking and much coincident drug abuse, Dorian received his B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Stanford, did predoctoral biomedical research at Harvard, and earned his Ph.D. in Developmental Genetics and Molecular Cell Biology from NYU. After getting sober, he spent three years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital before resigning academia and undertaking his Biking for Birds project. That odyssey, the first nationwide bicycle Big Year, carried him 18,000 miles through 28 states in 2014.

Momentum from that life-changing pivot opened doors in public speaking and travel writing. He consulted for the National Audubon Society in Colombia, and he currently guides domestic and international tours for Tropical Birding. He is an avid bird photographer and has just published his memoir, Birding Under the Influence: Cycling across America in Search of Birds and Recovery. It is a thrill-packed account of his adventure and an honest view of the alcoholism and drug abuse which preceded his departure.