Maybe you saw the news story about a guy in Cook County, Illinois who saw almost 300 different kinds of birds there in one year. The guy even saw a Golden Eagle. And a Short-tailed Shearwater (common in Australia, not Lake Michigan!). Around here that’s the avian equivalent of a Wrigley Field homer.
He added these to his honor roll of birds seen in one year and broke a record. This guy’s not just a two-fisted birdwatcher. He’s a role model.
We started this blog (which grew into something more—not sure how to describe it: e-zine?) in order to make the simple claim to an indifferent world that the image of a birdwatcher is not dweeby, but rugged.
Birdwatchers—as we’ve said on our home page, and throughout fifteen years of scribbled stories—are tough mothers. (Not real mothers, necessarily, though they’re birdwatching, too, but the slang kind.)
Point is: the guy who scored all those sightings in Cook County in one year is a wild animal of a birdwatcher. Beyond tough. Two-fisted in the extreme. Dogged, determined, devoted to an outdoor sport not normally known for heroes. But around here, yeah, he’s a hero.
A two-fisted birdwatcher to make us other two-fisted birdwatchers proud. And a little better at what we do. Hey, was that a Short-tailed Shearwater skimming over the lake? Who knows? Well—truth is, we do. What’s more, you do.
That’s what they say, Marc. Hence the name for a very popular website worth knowing: https://www.10000birds.com/
Holy Cow. Ten thousand bird species globally!
And Marc Davis–one more thing in answer to your wondering about bird populations…you might want to check Bob Grump’s recent essay here in which he talks about huge numbers of birds lost..
https://twofistedbirdwatcher.com/3-billion-birds-and-sexy-roller-skates/
It’s not all bad news though, as he revisits memories of a hippie chick with a sexy song, another reason to appreciate things past,
I’m looking at a recent backyard photo of a Cooper’s Hawk glowering at me, and I’m wondering–who’s the real tough guy, the birdwatcher or the bird?
Good question, Marc. The numbers are probably approximations but in Illinois they say around 457 species, and in the whole of N. America maybe 2,000. While in the world, around 10,000.
Thanks. I just read that the Evanston campus of Northwestern U. has at least 196 different species of birds. A beautiful place to visit right on the lake, it may be a treasure trove to identify and collect a few.
How many species of birds are there?