Called a “Travel Pioneer” by the BBC and “Birdman of Razzmatazz” by Newsweek, Noah Strycker is a 37-year-old (dob 2/9/86) 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 finding 6,042 species of birds (more than half the birds on Earth) in one calendar year.

Noah has written several books, is Associate Editor of Birding magazine, and guides in the polar regions for Quark Expeditions and Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions. He is also a birding ambassador for Leica Sport Optics.

Noah’s books include: Birding Basics (2022), for those just getting started; Backyard Guide to the Birds of North America (2nd ed.; 2019), a field guide to 150 of the most common and interesting birds of North America; Birds of the Photo Ark (2018), featuring up-close portraits of birds photographed by Joel Sartore; Birding Without Borders (2017), a personal account of Noah’s 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.

As an on-board ornithologist for expeditions to Antarctica and the high Arctic, Noah has traveled to Earth’s polar regions more than 50 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 summa cum laude in 2021 with a master’s degree in Marine Sciences from Stony Brook University. His master’s thesis, which received the MSRC Endowment Award for Best Thesis, assessed the global population of Chinstrap Penguins. In 2008, he earned a bachelor’s degree in Fisheries and Wildlife from Oregon State University, which presented him with the prestigious Don and Shirley Wirth Young Alumni Award in 2018.

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.

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