Birding Life List
One thing that is getting to be a fairly common pursuit of the serious bird watcher is the birding life list. This is a list of every different species viewed during the watchers lifetime.
Birding Life List
A birding life list is something that most serious bird watchers begin early in their bird watching careers. When ever a group of birders gather, you can be pretty sure that life lists will be discussed and compared. When a birder uses the word “serious”, they are talking about someone with a least some knowledge of look-alike species and other characteristics of birds. They also have at least some basic organizational skills and are capable of producing a semi-coherent list.
It is estimated that if a birder never leaves their own neighborhood, they still could list as many as 100 different species. Many of them would be migratory birds and not full time residents. If they simply move out into nearby parks and nature areas, that list could expand to a many as 300. It is estimated that there are something like 850 different species that could be seen just in North America.
There are almost 9,000 species of birds worldwide, so this would be the maximum number. To date, no one has come close to claiming to have seen them all. In fact, there is a 600 plus club that is considered fairly exclusive. That gives an idea of what a full time birder might aspire to on his life list.
It is the life list that is responsible for sending birders to distant countries and exotic parts of the world. Of course, there is the joy of the trip and all of the additional benefits of travel, but it is often the addition of a large group of new species to your birding life list that is the main motivation for many bird watchers.
The pursuit of rare species is popular with birders. In the UK, this is called twitching and in the United States, it is called chasing. The term twitching is gaining popularity in the younger generation of American birders as well. It is thought the term comes from the fact that when news of a rare species spotting in the UK was announced, people would hop on their motorbikes and head for the sighting area. They would often arrive “twitching” from the cold. It is the desire to get those extra and rare names on their life lists that provided the motivation.