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My Way: Making a List, Checking it Twice

After our short drive from Charlottesville to the James River, we had barely disembarked from the van when movement caught my eye. Flying across an open meadow from the large trees on the river's bank to a grove on the other side was a blur. My identification skills allowed me to conclude that the blur was a bird, but that is all. It was two-thirds of the way across the field before I meekly cried, "bird flying" and pointed.

Our guide, John Rowlett from Field Guides, Inc., casually looked for the briefest of moments. Drawing upon his observation of some minute detail-a hint of dark red, bill size, or some other equally obscure features noticed from 50 yards-he announced "orchard oriole" and moved on to the business of finding us warblers. The warblers of Virginia were, after all, the primary targets of this tour.

This was the first hour of our first bird tour and I was reluctant to say or do too much. However, the orchard oriole was a new bird for me, a lifer, and I wanted to count it. Of course, I had seen no detail: no color, no size, no bill shape, nothing but a blur. But, I repeat, I wanted to count it, and John had identified it as an orchard oriole even if I hadn't. So, risking being ostracized by my fellow birders for the rest of the trip, I asked John the age-old birding joke question, "Did you see that bird well enough for me to count it?"

The orchard oriole is in my life journal, having been seen along the James River in Virginia in May 2001 with John Rowlett and seven other people. But the same bird also heads my target bird list. Now that I have listed the bird, I still want to find it, see it, study it, and identify it myself. Yes, I have seen the orchard oriole, but because birding, even listing, involves so much more than what happened along the James, the orchard oriole and I have yet to meet. Thus, like Santa Claus, I make my list, but then I check it twice, or thrice, or as many times as the joys of birding permit.

Building a life list can be intoxicating and a worthwhile goal in and of itself. And, for new birders anxious to add notches to their belt, it can also suffer from oversimplistic and optimistic identifications. The temptation to see a new bird is, at times, overwhelming. I can still remember trying to stretch an odd-looking bird into an immature scissor-tailed flycatcher in the desert of central Arizona. I once called a LeConte's thrasher perched atop a saguaro cactus because the setting sun rendered the breast and belly spots of a curved-billed invisible. It is so tempting, so easy, and it is, after all, your list and you can do what you like with it.

Perhaps my biggest stretch occurred when my wife and I had just purchased our first birding scope. I took it to the desert outside Phoenix, Arizona, trying to learn to find and focus. I was studying some finches in a nearby bush when a different bird flew right into the scope's field of view. I focused and saw a red forehead. I magnified and the bird turned, revealing a black chin. To this day I will swear to these details; I will even take a polygraph. And in my life journal, but not counted in my total, is the most pathetic attempt to justify the presence of a hoary redpoll in Arizona in May that can be imagined.

I now have slightly more than 400 birds on my North American life list. The wrentit I thought I saw in northern California in 1999 (my first year birding) was finally replaced by a real one at Echo Canyon outside of Los Angeles in 2002. I really did see a LeConte's thrasher west of Phoenix at the locally famous thrasher place in 2002. I am now fairly comfortable with my list. The redpoll (not counted) is still high on the target list, as is the orchard oriole (counted). Oh, and, John, you know that gray shadow I saw for half a second in the bogs of West Virginia that you called a Swainson's warbler? I'm still looking for it, too. I will find it, see it, study it, identify it, and then, my list will have been checked twice. And my joy of birds and birding will have been doubled.