keeping a list
May. 16th, 2005 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanKeeping 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.
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.
