The life list

[Deb London]

I was researching more about bird lists, after reading one or two posts that caught my eye. For anyone as interested as I was, here is one of the more informative extracts that I found.

THE LIFE LIST
One entry in a Life List...Most serious birders compile a Life List. It's a list of all the bird species they've identified with absolute certainty during their whole lifetime of serious birding. Being "serious" implies knowing about look-alike species and subspecies, the various plumage states, and having a systematic-enough mind to not be sloppy and haphazard when it comes to making the lists.

Life Lists are extremely important to many birders. Wherever particularly interesting birds congregate, you can bet that birders will be there "searching for the rare ones" to add to their Life Lists. Expensive cruises to the Antarctica and river trips to isolated regions of the Amazon are staged just for people hoping to add new birds to their Life List.
HOW MANY BIRDS WILL YOU LIST?

If you should start your own Life List right now, and for some reason during the rest of your life you never travel beyond your neighborhood, you might well end up listing a hundred species or more -- many species being spotted during migration. If you should expand your birding trips to include local parks and nature reserves, you could end up with 300 or more species. If somehow you were to see all the bird species ever sighted in all of North America, your list would hold about 850 names. So far no one has seen all the earth's more than 9,000 bird species. There's a "600 Club" for birders who have listed more than 600 species, so listing that many is considered doing pretty well.
ORGANIZING YOUR LIST

There are many ways to organize a Life List, including just writing down the English names in the order in which newly identified birds are seen, and this may be the most common approach for rank beginners. What follows, however, is a small sample from my own Life List, which is organized in "checklist order," sometimes called "phylogenetic order." This method, using Latin names, is useful for lists holding several hundred names and compiled in various countries where English names may not always be standardized. Here it is:
CORACIIFORMES
Alcedinidae
Alcedo atthis / Common Kingfisher vii-11-80-SPA
Alcedo cristata / Malachite Kingfisher i-28-90-MAD
Ceryl alcyon / Belted Kingfisher i-24-76-KY
Ceryl torquata / Ringed Kingfisher ii-14-77-GUA
Chloroceryle aenea / Pygmy Kingfisher iii-8-78-GUA
Chloroceryle americana / Green Kingfisher iii-8-78-GUA
Meropidae
Merops apiaster / Common Bee-eater viii-5-80-SPA
Merops superciliosus / Blue-cheeked Bee-eater i-31-90-MAD
Momotidae
Aspatha gularis / Blue-throated Motmot i-19-85-MEX
Eumomota superciliosa / Turquoise-browed Motmot ii-25-77-GUA
Momotus mexicanus / Russet-crowned Motmot ii-3-79-MEX
Momotus momota / Blue-crowned Motmot iii-24-76-MEX
Upupidae
Upupa epops / Hoopoe vii-11-80-SPA

CUCULIFORMES
Cuculidae
Centropus toulou / Black Coucal ii-1-90-MAD
Coccyzus americanus / Yellow-billed Cuckoo v-31-76-TN
Coccyzus erythrophthalmus / Black-billed Cuckoo x-2-76-KY

The headings CORACIIFORMES and CUCULIFORMES, are the Latin names for two of the 30-odd bird orders. The Coraciiformes is the "kingfisher order," and the Cuculiformes is the "cuckoo order." In the list, family names end with the letters "ae," as in the "Cuculidae," which is the cuckoo family.

This "checklist" manner of listing -- following the order established by the American Ornithological Union -- causes closely related birds to be grouped together. In the above list, for instance, all kingfishers appear in one place, and all motmots appear in another. Such grouping answers at a glance the question, "Just how many species of kingfisher have I seen?" Also, it highlights the fact that kingfishers and motmots are closely related, which isn't immediately obvious in the field.

In the above list the code "vii-11-80-SPA" translates to, "this bird was seen on July 11, 1980, in Spain." If I want to know where in Spain it was seen, in what kind of habitat, and what the weather was like that day, it's easy enough to dig out the big three-ring binder in which all my daily bird-lists of that time are kept (now I keep lists on my hard drive...) I use three capital letters when referring to countries other than the United States (MAD is Madagascar, GUA is Guatemala); two letters are used for U.S. states.

Keeping a Life List on the computer is pretty handy. When a new kingfisher is seen, for example, the Life-List file can be loaded with a word processor, the SEARCH option can be used to go immediately to "kingfisher," and then it's a nice ceremony to type the new sighting in with all the others.

Again, this is just one listing method. More serious birders might find fault with it because, for one thing, it doesn't mention races or subspecies, which in the future could be lumped into or split from other species.
WHY BOTHER?

Life Lists are fun! Looking over these hard-won entries gives immense satisfaction. Each entry evokes memories of travel in interesting places, and is nothing less than a "trophy" testifying to bird-spotting successes!

The only rule for any kind of list is this: Don't list any species unless you're 100 percent sure your identification is correct. Well, maybe there's a second, rule, too, and that is Don't get so obsessed with collecting names that your begin ignoring the beauty in birds and bird habitats. For some unfortunate souls, their Life-Listing has taken on the character of stamp collecting. Just get a name, add it, and move on to the next...
GETTING STARTED

In preparation for starting your own Life List, if you are in North America you may want to view and perhaps print out the list of birds for your area found online on the page Bird Checklists by State & Province presented by Thayer Birding Software.

Wikipedia has a page called "List of birds of Canada and the United States." The American Ornithologists' Union presents a page called The A.O.U. Check-list of North American Birds, Seventh Edition, where you can see a list of all the bird species known to occur in North and Middle America -- over 2,000 of them.

Finally, if you're really serious about listing birds, you may want to visit the comprehensive page A Proposed Format for Local Bird Checklists, presented by the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center.

I must admit, I didn't know there was such a science to this.

Two thoughts have occurred to me as I begin to look forward to pursuing my hobby this year. If I start keeping a list, will I become one of those awful pains in the neck who gets hooked and starts imagining ticks are more important than birds? Or will I regret that I didn't start a list in later life?

Of course no one can answer these questions. But I'd like to hear people's thoughts on keeping such lists.

[accipter]

I am really confused now having read many of the posts, would some one like to point out the difference between a birder and a twitcher? I know a twitcher will go anywhere to see a rare bird and tick it off the list but it seems a birder does the same thing. So what do you call a person who just likes to see birds and just likes to be a casual observer, I thought that was a birder but apparently not and what's a person called in birding circles who only studies one species. No wise cracks please to the last question.

[Paul mabbott]

Originally Posted by Deb London

I must admit, I didn't know there was such a science to this.

Let's get one thing straight - twitching is not scientific. Scientific birding (ornithology) involves quantitataive, replicated studies of behaviour, distribution and so forth.

Two thoughts have occurred to me as I begin to look forward to pursuing my hobby this year. If I start keeping a list, will I become one of those awful pains in the neck who gets hooked and starts imagining ticks are more important than birds? Or will I regret that I didn't start a list in later life? ...........

Twitching is one of those futile human activities which clearly can become obsessive for the participant and very boring for outsiders. It's like trainspotting, of course ....

[Gatekeeper]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

Let's get one thing straight - twitching is not scientific. Scientific birding (ornithology) involves quantitataive, replicated studies of behaviour, distribution and so forth.



Twitching is one of those futile human activities which clearly can become obsessive for the participant and very boring for outsiders. It's like trainspotting, of course ....

In fact, it's just like any other hobby

[RobS]

Yes quite. Okay I confess, I was a 'plane spotter in the 1970s (I even wrote a book about it) so perhaps that's where my listing 'obsession' comes from.

Deb I suspect you're a bit too sensible to be a pain in the neck twitcher and only you can decide what to do. However I would suggest keeping a list just to see how many species you see and compare it to how many have been seen in say the UK (almost 600 now isn't it?).

Of what use is it? None, other than coming on here and saying I've seen 'x' and someone (like me ) saying I've seen 'y' where y>x!!

On another subject, if you decide to go to a specific place to see a specific bird, for example driving 180 miles each way to see a Golden Oriole that you have seen on several occasions before, is that not twitching of a kind?

Rob S

[Gatekeeper]

Originally Posted by Deb London

I was researching more about bird lists, after reading one or two posts that caught my eye. For anyone as interested as I was, here is one of the more informative extracts that I found.



I must admit, I didn't know there was such a science to this.

Two thoughts have occurred to me as I begin to look forward to pursuing my hobby this year. If I start keeping a list, will I become one of those awful pains in the neck who gets hooked and starts imagining ticks are more important than birds? Or will I regret that I didn't start a list in later life?

Of course no one can answer these questions. But I'd like to hear people's thoughts on keeping such lists.

Hi Deb,

I've had many bird lists over the years- some become more important, some become less so. Most birders keep lists because it's a fun aspect of the hobby. Here's some of the lists I've kept/keep:

World List/Life List - any species I see anywhere in the world
Western Palearctic List - any species seen with the Western Palearctic ecozone
British List - any species I see anywhere in Britain (not Ireland)
USA List - purely because I've done quite a bit of birding there
County List - usually a birder's home county, in my case Glamorgan
Norfolk List - the only other county list I've kept, but others have more county lists
Patch Lists - any bird seen within the boundaries of a designated patch; you can have as many of these as you like. For instance, one of mine is WWT Slimbridge.
Local Patch List - usually the place you bird the most, and normally the most important Patch List.
Window List - literally any bird I see from my widow
Garden List - anything that lands in my garden
Year List - this can be a very important list for many birders
Month List - anything seen in a calendar month, a useful list
Day List - anything heard or seen during the course of 24 hours
Train List - anything I see on train journeys, a personal favourite

Listing can get a bit obsessional; I was a bit 'gung-ho' with my year list and finally managed to see dead on 300 in Britain in a year, but others will see many more. The best way to view a list is as a fun extension of your hobby, don't let the list become an end in itself.

[SpikyPhasmid]

If you have county lists, garden lists, seasonal lists etc like Gatekeeper does, could that data ever be useful for biologists and ecologists, like informal surveys?

[accipter]

What's a birder that does not keep a list called then?

[Gatekeeper]

Originally Posted by RobS

On another subject, if you decide to go to a specific place to see a specific bird, for example driving 180 miles each way to see a Golden Oriole that you have seen on several occasions before, is that not twitching of a kind?

Twitching is usually defined as 'dropping everything at a moment's notice as soon as you hear of the presence of a rare bird, and immediately setting out to see it regardless of the distance'. I went to see the White-crowned Sparrow, at Cley, about a month after the news broke, so I don't regard that as twitching. I did however 'drop everything', and go to Pembrokeshire for a Pacific Diver . I've travelled about 240 miles each way to see Golden Orioles, 6 or 7 times; I regard that as 'going on holiday' .

[RobS]

What's a birder that does not keep a list called then?

Penless?

Gatekeeper has reminded me of when I commuted to London. On the way back I would see how many species I could see between Winchester and Southampton Parkway (8 minutes) I think my record was 10.

How sad is that?!

Rob S