When Owen Reiser found his brother on the porch with a bong placed on the family’s bird guide, he knew something was up. Quentin Reiser said he wanted to spend the next year traveling the U.S. looking for birds. He wanted to do what competitive birdwatchers call “A Big Year.”
“I thought he was nuts. I thought he was crazy,” Owen Reiser said. “But, we just had to go for it.”
A Big Year is a birder’s race against the calendar to identify as many bird species as possible in one year. The Reiser brothers’ new documentary “Listers” follows the highs, lows and quirks of that quest — and their newfound appreciation for bird watching.
“The whole thing kind of started as a joke, but we fell in love with birds and bird watching,” Quentin Reiser said. “It's a lifelong passion now.”
On Jan. 1, 2024, the brothers hopped in their 2010 Kia Sedona minivan and left their Collinsville home to track birds in every region of the U.S. By year’s end, they had logged 38,757 miles. With a $16,000 budget, from savings and Patreon donations, the pair spent their evenings in public parks and Cracker Barrel parking lots. They estimate that they ate approximately 400 cans of tuna.
Most Big Year competitors spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“It's a rich person's game, for sure,” Owen Reiser said, “and that's why we didn't win the game.”
By the end of the year, the brothers identified 579 bird species — 179 birds short of the top lister that year. That year, 19-year-old Tucson-based birder Ezekiel Dobson broke the record with 758 birds identified.
Dobson is just one of the many passionate, knowledgeable and eccentric bird watchers introduced in the brothers’ film.
“The listers are a subset of the culture of bird watchers, and the most passionate listers will do just about anything to get a bird on their list,” said Owen Reiser. “We met somebody who snuck into Cuba illegally to see some birds on their list. We also met previous record holders who went to see a rare bird in Florida. They [had] tunnel vision on the bird, and one of them got attacked by an alligator.”
A month after its release on YouTube, “Listers” has more than 1.2 million views and many rave reviews. They’ve fielded offers from producers interested in bringing the film to Netflix, HBO or Amazon, but they aren’t interested in selling it at this time.
“It’s not a good deal for the filmmaker. If, from the get go, it's a commission project, it can be [a good deal],” Owen Reiser said. “It's flattering, for sure, and hopefully we can leverage that into the next project.”
Having the documentary available for free on YouTube has other benefits, Quentin Reiser added. It makes it accessible to everyone.
“It's been kind of shocking and overwhelming that so many people from outside [the birding world] have enjoyed this film,” he said. “One of the best things is when people reach out and they say, ‘I've never had any interest in birds at all, but I just downloaded the Merlin app,’ or, ‘I just got binoculars.’ That's been crazy to see that it's actually getting people into bird watching.”
Quentin and Owen Reiser also published a field guide of their journey and the birds they saw along the way. The irreverent, funny and beautifully illustrated guide — with a slightly NSFW cover — is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For more on the Reiser brothers’ Big Year, including their discovery of Amish bird hotlines, their favorite St. Louis area sightings and a stoned run-in with mountain lion on a pitch-black evening, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Darrious Varner is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
