An excerpt from my Bird Life List
When I first became really interested in birds, I would frequently scour the internet looking for information on bird species in Florida (where I reside) and nearby places I could go to find them. I had already purchased my trusty Peterson guide and I wanted to see as many different kinds of birds as I could.
I quickly stumbled across a number of birding blogs with lots of good information, photographs and interesting accounts of bird watching adventures out in the field. I noticed that a lot of people would refer to various types of lists (life lists, year lists, month lists…). As a total novice, I had no idea what they were talking about.
Some additional research revealed that many people who participate in the activity of birding like to keep detailed lists of which species they’ve seen, and where and when they saw them. Some birders really get into the act of keeping lists; they may want to know how many birds they encountered in May 2015 vs May 2016, or which birds they’ve seen at a particular favorite location, or how many different species they were able to tally during a given calendar year. And then there’s the Life List, which captures every specific species you’ve managed to see since you started keeping track.
Initially, the notion of list-keeping felt overwhelming and overkill to me. Why not just go to the local wetland area armed with a guidebook and figure out that the adorable little diving bird with the poofy, rounded black-and-white head is called a Hooded Merganser?
Handsome male Hooded Merganser
The answer is that there’s nothing at all wrong with taking that approach to watching birds. Birding is a wonderfully flexible hobby that you can pursue as informally or as seriously as you like!
Having said that, the more involved I became in tracking down bird species, the more I realized that it would be nice to have a record of what I had actually seen. I started with an Excel spreadsheet that I carefully laid out according to taxonomic order (mimicking what I had seen other people do on various birding websites). It was a rather painstaking process but once I finally got it all set up, it was gratifying to see my birds all neatly categorized and counted. I’m a detail-oriented person by nature and found that the spreadsheet appealed to my ever-so-slightly obsessive sensibilities!
Eventually, I heard about eBird which makes the whole cataloguing process much easier. eBird is part of a citizen science initiative run by Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, in partnership with the National Audubon Society. The eBird website allows you to record your bird sightings based on time, date and location. The site keeps track of all the lists you submit. It’s easy to see at a glance how many species you’ve logged per month, year and location. It keeps a running tally of your life list totals too. You can filter your lists several different ways and even run statistical reports (if that sort of thing floats your boat). You can also look at lists that other eBird users have submitted and search for recent sightings of particular species you’d like to add to your lists. The information you input to the site becomes part of a searchable global database which aides in the study of bird distribution and abundance (which is pretty cool if you ask me!).
My eBird Stats
A snippet from one of my eBird checklists
I love eBird and spend altogether too much of my time meandering through the vast amount of data found there. It’s really fun to watch my lists grow and morph over time.
So for me, To List won out over Not to List.
Want to learn more about eBird? Check them out here.