keeping a list

[urbpan]

Keeping a list may be the ugliest part of birding (well, apart from the vests that some birders wear). It causes some of us to dismiss yellow-rumped warblers as "butterbutts" when we're on the hunt to see some new species. It causes us to miss out completely on interesting behavior of species we ignore--like the house sparrows I saw today, gathering caterpillars from the new oak leaves. House sparrows were brought to North America, in part, to help control caterpillars on crops. Unfortunately, they only collect caterpillars in the breeding season, to provide high-fat, high protein food for their chicks. I'd never observed this behavior before today, and it was fascinating.

My own bird list is in fragments--each vacation finds me adding to it in whatever notebook I'm using at the time. The complete list is probably in four or five different places. How important it is to me varies with the season. In times like now, when I'm adding to it, it suddenly becomes more important. I think the fact that the number of species of birds is finite (about 9000, one-tenth of which can be seen in North America) is the source of its appeal. My list (an unknown number below 300) is a certain fraction of the total, and every time I add to it, my list becomes more complete.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with keeping a list (in fact I keep two: a life list and a Metro-Boston list, birds I see in urban areas within rt. 128 or so), but I'm afraid of becoming the kind of birder who watches birds just to fill the list. There are people out there who go to great effort and expense to go see a particular rare bird, just to have it checked off. I can only hope that they enjoy the trip as well.

I'm curious. Are any of you birders, and do you keep a list (or more than one)? If so, howya doin'? I got a Veery yesterday.

Comments

[rwblackbird.livejournal.com]

My list was pretty massive. As you know I spent a full summer being paid to stalk rare birds full-time. I am listed as a contributor to the proncial breeding bird atlas.

But I would never invest my own time into it. not at this point in my life atleast.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

How many did you have at last count? (That sounds like a dream job, by the way--but those are always short term low-paying jobs, when they pay at all, right?)

[izzy23.livejournal.com]

I've got a list much like yours--in bits and pieces, here and there. Occasionally I'll print off a bird list and go through the Sibley's (and others, if I've been out of the country recently) checking things off for an overall count. I "keep" (if you can call it that, haphazard as it is) Florida, North America, and (somewhat ambitiously) world lists. Florida's a little under 300, North America right around 300, and world a couple dozen over 300, but I haven't totalled it all up in a while. I also keep a yard list, sort of, in the back of my head. At least, I could tell you what's been there pretty easily.

Listing can be a bugaboo for me on particular trips. The last few years, this one excepted, I've done a one-week birding trip at the height of spring migration. It generally starts out as drive-at-night-so-you-don't-miss-anything-and-sleep-in-a-tent-so-you-get-up-early-enough listing madness, but then winds down into a regular old vacation after the initial burst of ambition. Last year, I ended up spending the better part of an hour just sitting watching baby anhingas getting fed in the Everglades, despite the fact that I can see anhingas pretty much whenever I want within a twenty minute drive from my house. Also spent two nights in Key West, picking up all of two species but also some very good beer, after glutting "the list" for three days in the Dry Tortugas (and staying up all of the last night holding the rainfly down on the tent in the face of hurricane-force winds).

I'm much more likely to list a day at a time, when I'm out with another birder or two. I'll occasionally attempt a "big day", but find that after lunchtime, I'm pretty happy just sitting on the beach watching the sanderlings play tag with the waves, with maybe another minor burst of birding activity in the early evening, preferably somewhere with a nice sunset at the end of the road. With luck and the seasons on my side, I've managed eighty and ninety-species days that way, though, and friends of mine have topped a hundred. Having this place just down the way feels almost like cheating.

Someday, we've got to get you guys down for a visit. I recommend winter.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

That would be just delightful!

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

I made this icon for you. :)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

You rule! I love it!

[momomom.livejournal.com]

I keep a list on enature.com. It is very small relative to real birder...around 100. I could never keep up with even that if it were not web based.

I'm going to add you. Your pictures are very nice.