There’s a wing of the birding community that lives to list. Loves to list. Lusts to list. Birding is collecting. So this is understandable.
All the guys I hung with had lists. Lists of ball players, of girls they’d been with. Of micro-breweries they liked.
Do I have bird list, a life list? C’mon, I’ve been wandering woods and fields since I was a kid. Of course I have one. But it’s not typical.
Somewhere in my stack of bird books, there’s a beat-up “Golden Guide to Field Identification – Birds of North America,” By Robbins, Bruun and Zimm. Copyright 1966. It’s so old it has a Baltimore Oriole in it. Fine by me.
My list is in this book. Actually, it is this book.
Not that I need a list. I recall every bird I’ve seen. Ask me if I’ve seen a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher and I’ll tell you where I first saw one in June ’79. But, as the computer culture has taught us, it’s smart to back things up.
So back to my backup.
A few years ago I went through that old bird book with pen in hand. Next to every bird I’d seen, I put a check. Smooth-billed Ani? Sure. Kiskadee. Clark’s Nutcracker. My first Pine Grosbeak. I remembered them, and checked their picture. I still add checks as I see new birds.
That’s my life list. You can’t turn many pages without seeing checks. How many? A while back I ran the numbers but quit somewhere in the decent triple digits. Guess I don’t have list lust.
But I respect the hardy guys who do. No matter how two-fisted a birdwatcher you might be, somebody’s always better.
That’s okay. I see that I’d checked Abert’s Towhee on page 304. I remember the hazy Arizona afternoon when I saw it, and smile.
Maybe one of these days I’ll run out of unchecked birds in these old pages. But when I leaf through the shorebirds, the alcids, auks and puffins, I figure, no, probably not going to be a problem.
