NEIL HAYWARD has been a birdwatcher ever since he was strong enough to lift a pair of binoculars on his own. He is the president of the Brookline Bird Club, board member of the American Birding Association, counsel member of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, bird sightings editor for the journal Bird Observer and the author of Lost Among the Birds (Bloomsbury, June 2016), a memoir of his accidental big year when he set a new record for most birds seen in North America.