The big year
A Big Year is a calendar-year birding contest: count species from 1 January to 31 December. The 2011 film The Big Year dramatises that race. Christmas sits inside the year; it does not start it.
How it works
In the hobby, a Big Year is a self-set or listed attempt to see or hear as many bird species as possible inside one civil year and a named area. The clock is the calendar. Midnight on 1 January opens it. Midnight at the end of 31 December closes it. You cannot bank a December bird for the next January. You cannot start in March and call eleven months a year. The rules of a given list — what counts as a species, what counts as “seen,” which map is in play — belong to that list. This page will not write a listing committee’s bylaws from memory.
Christmas Day is one square on that grid. A birder out on 25 December is still in the same year they entered on 1 January. The feast does not pause the count and does not add a bonus species. New Year’s Eve is the last evening. New Year’s Day is someone else’s first morning. If you came to this holiday page because the title sounded like a festive film, stay for the year: the year is the point.
People also use “big year” loosely for any crowded twelve months: a wedding year, a first-child year, a year of travel. That usage is ordinary English. It is not the birding term and it is not the 2011 movie. If you meant the film, the title is The Big Year. If you meant the contest, the unit is the calendar year.
The film from 2011
The Big Year is a 2011 American comedy directed by David Frankel, from a screenplay by Howard Franklin. It is based on Mark Obmascik’s 2004 non-fiction book The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession. The film uses fictional birders. Steve Martin plays Stu Preissler, Jack Black plays Brad Harris, and Owen Wilson plays Kenny Bostick. They spend one calendar year trying to list more North American species than the others.
20th Century Fox released it in the United States on 14 October 2011. It is a PG comedy about obsession, travel, and the people left at home while someone chases a rare bird. It is not a nativity, not a Santa picture, and not a December-only tape, though it will sit in a winter pile because the year in the story has to include winter. Runtime figures differ by listing; use the edition in your hand. This page will not pick a fighting minute count or invent a box-office story.
Hobby: count bird species in one civil year, inside a named map. Book: Mark Obmascik, 2004, non-fiction about real Big Years. Film: 2011, David Frankel, Steve Martin, Jack Black, Owen Wilson. Calendar: 1 January through 31 December. Christmas is inside that span.
January 1 to December 31
If you are actually doing a Big Year, the useful tools are a notebook or an app you already trust, a list of what counts, and a year you can live with. Travel is optional. A county Big Year and a continental Big Year are different ambitions that share a clock. Weather, migration, and whether you can take a weekday off are the real limits. A film still of three men on a boat is not a plan.
The holiday season is a bad week to pretend you have infinite time. 24 and 25 December are already full in many houses. A dawn start on the 25th is a household negotiation, not a moral duty to a list. A quiet walk on the 26th still falls in the same year. Leap years add 29 February; they do not add a second Christmas. 2026 is not a leap year. 2028 is.
The year is the container. Christmas is a day you already know how to find. Do not let a title make the 25th sound like a starting gun. When the year ends, the count ends. Publish it, keep it private, or start another on the next 1 January. The film will still be the 2011 comedy. The book will still be Obmascik’s. The feast on 25 December will still be the feast, whether or not you saw a bird that morning.
Questions and answers
- Is The Big Year a Christmas movie?
- No. It is a 2011 comedy about a year-long birding race. Christmas can appear as one day in that year. It is not the subject.
- When does a Big Year run?
- From 1 January through 31 December in the calendar you are using, inside whatever map the list names.
- Do I need the book to watch the film?
- No. The film tells a fictional race. The 2004 book is non-fiction under the same idea.
Related guides
10 year anniversary
A 10 year anniversary is the same month and day ten civil years after the original date. If that day does not exist in the later year, pick 28 February or 1 March and say which.
10000 days
10,000 days is a little more than 27 years: 27 × 365 = 9,855 days, so 145 days remain if you ignore leap days.
107 days
107 days is a span of 107 midnights on the civil calendar: 15 weeks and 2 days. From Thursday 3 September 2026 that span ends on Saturday 19 December 2026.