Fabia Higashiyama-Sheen

Fabia Higashiyama-Sheen is a Japanese-American 17 year-old high school student and birder from Sierra Vista,Arizona.She lives with her family in the pre-dominantly Japanese suburb of Makkari on the southwestern side of town near Fort Huachuca at the foot of the Huachuca Mountains.She is one of the 3 main competitors to win the 2010 Big Year.She is also the main protagonist of The Battle of the Birdwatchers.She is the current North American bird species annual record-holder and winner of the 2010 Big Year with total of 748.Fabia is also President of the Makkari High School Young Birder's Society.

Appearance
Fabia is a young girl with short blue hair and beautiful dark green eyes.Her binoculars are a pair of Nikon Monarchs.She has 2 sets of earrings on her ears.One is a pair red triangle-shaped earrings that are on the lower ear and gold earrings on the upper ear.When she goes birding,she wears a jacket with a black shirt underneath it and a pair of jeans and a messenger bag on her side

History
Fabia was born in Tokyo,Japan on May 24,1996 to Shizuka Higashiyama, A Japanese high school girl from Atsugi in the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan outside of Tokyo and to David Sheen, the son of a US Marine from Sedona, Arizona who moved to Sierra Vista just after Fabia's sister,Serena was born in 1992.Her father returned home to America when Fabia was born, leaving Fabia, her sister and their mother on their own.During her time being raised in Tokyo,Fabia would go to the park and take her mother's binoculars and look for birds with her into Tokyo and this started Fabia's obsession with birds and this immediately changed her life.In 2001,Fabia and her family moved to the United States,to her father's hometown of Sierra Vista.In 2005,She met her best friend,Casey Velasquez,An Ecuadorian immigrant who is as passionate about birds as Fabia.She became an American citizen in 2007,5 years later She decided to participate in the 2010 Big Year and set out on a journey that would undoubtedly change her life forever....

Relationships
Casey Velasquez-best friend and next-door neighbor

Shizuka Higashiyama-mother and travel agent

Ichabod Crane-friend and enemy

Donald Sheen-father

Serena Sheen-older sister and friend

Jessie O'Connor-friend based on mutual hate

Yasuhito Nagatomo-friend

Kanisawa Okazaki-childhood friend from Japan

Camille Flexson-arch-rival,friend later

Catherine Hamilton-Friend and ally

Stuart Healy-friend and mentor

Jeffrey Gordon-friend

Jonathan Rosen-friend

Hanaye Ishizaki-friend

Rosemary Kramer-friend

Takehiko Higashiyama-maternal grandfather(deceased)

Austin Sheen-paternal grandfather(deceased)

Personality
Fabia is a very free-spirited individual.She's analytical, logical, creative, intelligent, curious, inquisitive, witty, always fond of learning for the sake of learning and wise which gives her the traits of a Ravenclaw, the Hogwarts house she has been sorted into but she is also ambitious, patient, humble, accepting of other people, tolerant, kind-hearted, caring of other people, fair and just, passionate of her love for birds, and determined. Fabia's Ilvermorny house is Thunderbird. Her friends look to her as their leader and as a mentor to the people in the Young Birder's Society.She loves being with her friends on and off at school.She loves to play video games, soccer.and of course, go birding. She loves listening to music. She also likes to watch anime and read manga and since moving to Arizona,she started reading the works of Edward Abbey.She is also a big soccer fan.Her grandfathers on both sides fought against each other in World War ll.Both were extremely avid birders and fought in The Battle of Attu and they became friends after the battle.She also has the ability to identify a species of bird by hearing its song or call,a gift passed down to her from her grandfather.She also plays on her school's girl soccer team.She is a midfielder.Her religion is Shintoism and usually comes to Japan for pilgrimage.Another one of Fabia's favorite hobbies,secretly,is longboarding.She began doing it when she was 15 and the fastest speed she ever recorded was clocked at 75 miles per hour.She was forced to retire after surviving an accident while longboarding in the Mojave Desert in California.Among her most prized possessions is a blue and silver Ravenclaw scarf knitted by her older sister and was given to her for Christmas when she was 13.She's studying to become a teacher at Stanford University.

Part 1
As 2009 drew to a close,Fabia eagerly waited the 2010 Big Year to began.On January 1,The Big Year had officially begun as Fabia and her friend Casey headed for the Santa Catalina Mountains and Saguaro National Park in Southeastern Arizona and finishing the day with 45 species.When the day ends at dinner,Fabia tells her Dad that she is doing a Big Year and her father criticizes her for it,Fabia gets mad and leaves dinner.Fabia eventually leaves Arizona and heads to Texas,and then to Assateague National Seashore,Virginia and meets Ichabod Crane,A birder from Sandy,Utah.We then discover that Fabia has a uniquely special ability:to identify the species of a bird by its song and/or call after finding a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.As February(month 2) comes to an end,Fabia travels to Coos Bay,Oregon to look for pelagic birds and meets Annie Auklet.She meets Jessie O'Connor of Colorado after being psyched out the current champion,Camille Flexson who thought O'Connor was doing a Big Year.After visiting Oregon,Fabia went to Maine in search of boreal birds.By the end of March,Fabia's total number was 278.In April,There was a massive storm about to hit The Gulf Coast and it could mean one thing:a migratory fallout.Fabia had only one mission:She had to go to Texas.In the outskirts of Houston,Fabia and her longtime best friend,Casey Velasquez traveled to High Island,Texas.All three competitors watched as the fallout unfold.Fabia met up wit Jessie once again since departing Oregon.Fabia,Casey and Jessie spot Camille and they decided to follow her,and saw a total of 112 species after following Camille.Camille discovers that the girls are following her.Then all 3 have discovered that there is a Pink-footed Goose in the area and follow her.She unfortunately misses the goose and she gets angry.The next day,they head down to the Rio Grande Valley,in the south of Texas and to Big Bend National Park and found 40 more species,finding a grand total of 132 species.Fabia,Casey and Jessie end their Texas vacation in San Antonio with dinner.Fabia tells Jessie that she's doing a Big Year and Jessie promises not to tell anyone.Fabia eventually returns to Arizona and goes camping in the Chiricahua Mountains,her most favorite place in the world,to find an Elegant Trogon,the only trogon to have its range extend into The United States.She eventually went to Los Angeles to visit The Channel Islands.Fabia had then learned that Jessie is doing a Big Year.This angers Fabia and sends her into a deep depression that brings her on the verge of quitting the Big Year

Attu,Alaska
As May begins to settle in,Fabia knew that in order to hopefully win The Big Year,she had to go to Alaska,to the Aleutian Island of Attu.On May 14th (Day 134),Fabia's mother woke her up early to go to Alaska.They eventually arrive in Phoenix,where she flew to Vancouver and then to Anchorage.Fabia met Camille once again,Fabia also tells her that Jessie is doing a Big Year and number is over 500.Both experience turbulence as they enter a storm after flying on to the island.After arriving on Attu and receiving her 500th bird,a Golden-crowned Sparrow,Fabia learned there was a Rustic Bunting at Massacre Valley.The bird began to fly towards Temnac Bay in the south.Fabia's special gift kicked in and she said the bunting had gone up the hill and flew west and downhill again and it finally landed at Murder Point.Fabia and her new friends find the bird and then find Camille shooting pictures of the bird.Over the next 2 weeks,Fabia participates in what she claims as the best 2 weeks of her life.She then takes the time to explore the island and.10 days later,(May 24th),Fabia turns 17 years old and her friends throw her a surprise party.Jessie and her friend Kirsten arrive on Attu after missing their planes 2 weeks ago and spending time in Talkeetna on the the mainland.The next day,Fabia,Camille and Jessie witness a pair of Bald Eagles doing a mating ritual.She had also got bird #600,a Sooty Shearwater.Fabia returns home to Arizona with a total of 627 species and prepares for summer and the second half of the Big Year.

Part 2
Summer has officially arrived and Fabia has returned home to Arizona from the island of Attu.A few days later after some much needed rest,Fabia asks her friend Casey to drive her out to Florida,a place that she has never been to before to find some birds that she desperately needs for her Big Year.Their first stop was Cape Canaveral and then headed south to Miami in search of parrots and the Spot-breasted Oriole and then to the Florida Keys.After arriving in Key West,the girls head to Dry Tortugas National Park.Casey then proclaims to Fabia that she can't sweat or get sunburned.3 days later,they return to the mainland to visit Everglades National Park.On June 17,(Day 176),A group of 3 unidentified hummingbirds have been discovered in her backyard.From nowhere,Camille appears and discovers that the three species are Magnificent Hummingbird,Plain-capped Starthroat and Berylline Hummingbird.After the discovery,Camille vanishes,now she knows that Fabia is doing a Big Year.2 days later,Kanisawa,Yasuhito,Casey,Fabia leave Sierra Vista and travel north to the Grand Canyon to find a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.The last time this bird in this area was in 1996.Fabia also complains to Casey that she really wants to drive and Casey urges her to back to sleep.The next morning,a freak cold front had hit the area and a blanket of snow had fallen upon the massive canyon.The girls were immediately hit a blast of freezing cold air and ran to the lodge on the North Rim where the bird was located and hoped to get some sleep after arriving in the national park.Meanwhile,at Bright Angel Point on The North Rim,A group of Canadians and one American found the bird while overlooking the canyon.A few days they went to New York City and Fabia met her friend,Catherine,who she met in Alaska.2 days later,The Pink-headed Goose that both Fabia and Casey missed in High Island had arrived in New York.They missed it again and Fabia set out on a journey lasting 48 days taking her 21,000 across 29 states and spotting 62 new species for her lifelist with a total of 697 species,On July 31st,her journey ended in California,when she saw Catherine once again in Lassen Volcanic National Park.Her 700th bird was a White-headed Woodpecker spotted in the National Park.The first week of August was important to Fabia because it was time for the Southwest Wings Birding Festival in her hometown of Sierra Vista.There she reunited with an old friend she met at ABA Camp in Colorado,a teen birder and high school student from Georgia named Rosemary Kramer