Kenn Kaufman — the birding authority

born 1954 · born in South Bend, here to age nine

The fame: Kenn Kaufman is America's best-known working birder: author and illustrator of the Kaufman Field Guides to birds, butterflies, and North American nature; author of the Peterson Field Guide to Advanced Birding (1990); and author of Kingbird Highway, the memoir of the year he spent, as a teenager in 1973, setting the North American "Big Year" record of 671 species seen in twelve months. He has been an editor and consultant on birds for the National Audubon Society since 1984, received the American Birding Association's Ludlow Griscom Award in 1992, and is the only person to receive the ABA's lifetime achievement award twice. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and holds the Linnaean Society of New York's Eisenmann Medal.

The tie, exactly: Kaufman was born in South Bend in 1954 and began birding at the age of six — here. When he was nine the family moved to Wichita, Kansas, and the intensification of the obsession, the teenage travels, and the 1973 record all happened from Kansas and the road. The South Bend chapter is a birth and the first nine years, inside which sits the fact the rest of the life grows from: the birding started here. That is the claim, and it is enough; this section does not enlarge it.

Sources:

1. Standard biographical record of Kaufman — the South Bend birth (1954), birding from age six, the family's move to Wichita when he was nine, the 1973 record of 671 species.
2. Kaufman Field Guides and publisher biographies — Kingbird Highway, the Audubon consultancy from 1984, the Ludlow Griscom Award (1992), the two ABA lifetime achievement awards.