"Birds of the Photo Ark," a collaboration with photographer Joel Sartore, came out in March 2018 from National Geographic. It features essays by Strycker about birds photographed in captivity by Sartore as part of his Photo Ark project. In 2019 the "Backyard Guide to the Birds of North America" came out from National Geographic. Co-authored by Strycker and by Jonathan Alderfer, it's a completely revised second edition of a field guide to 150 of the most common and interesting birds in North America. Strycker began his worldwide Big Year on January 1, 2015, in Antarctica, aboard the Akademik Ioffe, a former Soviet research vessel then leased by One Ocean Expeditions for adventure tourism. The first bird he saw of the year was a Cape petrel, near Spert Island. From there he traveled up the South and North American continents, across to Europe, throughout Africa, and into Asia and Australia. The trip took him to 42 countries and all seven continents, and was done entirely with a backpack. On September 16, 2015, near Thattekad, India, he saw a pair of Sri Lanka frogmouths, his 4,342nd bird species of the year, which topped the previous world Big Year record set in 2008 by British birders Alan Davies and Ruth Miller. His final species of the year was a group of Silver-breasted broadbills seen on a return to India, in Assam, putting him at the record breaking total of 6,042 species. This record was later broken in 2016 by Arjan Dwarshuis. Strycker wrote a book about the adventure for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.