It's Time I Build My Birding Life List
Yesterday I read a post on Birding With BillBow about some warblers he was trying to find and photograph to add to his life list.
I ended up having a couple of conversations, first with Peter L. Barr in my notes, then with Nathaniel Bowler himself in the comment section of his post, about building my own birding life list.
Although I never really considered myself a high-speed birder, I have none-the-less seen and photographed hundreds of birds over the past 15 years or so.
This sounds like a project I might enjoy …
I decided that I’m going to build my historical list based on photographs I’ve taken over the years. While this might leave a few birds off my list, I’m honestly not good enough at sight/sound ID to be sure of what I’ve seen unless I have a photo for reference.
Note: the one exception I’ll make it for the Montezuma Quail.
I’d still love to get a good sharp picture of one of these guys someday. But even if that never happens, they’re on my list.
As I was thinking about how I might build this list, me being me, I was tempted to make it way more difficult than it has to be. I was going to set up a “birding life list” page, then have a separate post or page for each bird, with pictures and maybe a story about how/where I saw then, etc, etc, etc …
Then it occurred to me that nobody wants to see a whole post about the great shots I got of the House Finch or White-winged Doves that are in my backyard every morning.
Plus, it turns out there’s an easier way:
https://support.ebird.org/en/support/solutions/articles/48000804866-enter-your-pre-ebird-life-list
Even this method may still take months, as I’ll have to go through my picture archives to build the initial list. But building a whole website with individual pictures could take years … and let’s be real, nobody would be as interested in looking at it afterwards as me.
Going forward I’m going to slowly build the historical list, but also try to get much better about doing checklists in realtime and adding to my list in that way as well.
As for sharing what’s on my list …
It turns out I’ve already seen some unique birds that a lot of other people haven’t, and I’ve already written posts about them:
So, going forward, that’s the plan. The list will be built (mostly silently) on ebird. Then if I see something particularly interesting, I’ll write a post about it here. Or, I don’t know, maybe sometimes I’ll just post about some of the great birding locations in this area, even if I don’t see anything particularly unique that day.
What do you think? Does this sound like a solid plan?
Every photo tells a story, and stories are better with company. If you enjoyed this post, please pass it along to a fellow explorer. Thank you!
Sounds like a very solid plan. I spent good amount of time entering my historical checklists into eBird, and then I did the same for my dad and grandparents. It was rewarding, it provided valuable historical data, and it was fun (though at times tedious 😅). Good luck and I’m happy to answer any questions!
I'd also like to add that eBird data is used by literally thousands of scientists across the globe who are doing vital monitoring and conservation work on birds and bird-adjacent species. It is 100% worth contributing to for that reason alone. Cheers, man!