Year of the Bird: Life Lists

Do you have a life list? Many bird watchers do.  What is a life list? Well, just as the name implies, it is a list of all the birds you have seen in your life. There are certain rules for recording species for your life list, such as the birds have to be wild; you cannot count birds you see in a zoo. Hearing a bird is acceptable; you don’t have to actually see it, which is good because some species, like rails, are very difficult to see! Some people keep multiple lists, like state lists (all the birds they have seen in a particular state) or year lists (all the birds they see in a given year). Some people even keep lists of birds they see and hear in movies!

The person with the biggest life list is Tom Gullick, a British bird watcher who recorded his 9,000th bird (there are 10,000 bird species total) in 2012; it was a Wallace’s Fruit-dove in Indonesia. He was 81 years old when he saw it, and when he reached that milestone, he decided it was time to hang up his binoculars and retire from bird watching. My life list is currently 720, so I have a long way to go! With the great variety of species that can be found at this time of year, spring migration might be a good time for you to start your own life list! Image: Paula Romero