I started my birding life list when I was about 14 years old. It seemed innocent enough at the time. Little did I know where it would lead.
A life list is a list of all species seen in one’s lifetime. Roger Tory Peterson’s groundbreaking Guide To The Birds, published in 1934, included a checklist of all recognized North American birds. Readers could check off individual species as they identified them.
The 1960s edition of Peterson’s guidebook fell into my hands at an impressionable age. I wanted to find every single bird in that book and check them all off. I still do.
It’s possible to keep multiple lists, each tallying a specific region or time period. For instance, I keep a list of all the birds I’ve seen in the world, in the state and in my yard (or nearby). But the one list that matters most to me is my ABA Area list, defined as the Western Hemisphere north of Mexico, sort of.
ABA stands for American Birding Association, a membership organization that promotes birding and sets listing standards. To qualify for your bird list, a species must be alive, wild and accurately identified in the area where you observed it.
The ABA’s official listing area encompasses the United States, Canada and the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, along with adjacent waters extending up to 200 miles from shore or halfway to neighboring countries — whichever distance is shorter. This area excludes both Bermuda and Greenland.
But what defines a species? ABA sets the rules, but the American Ornithological Society (AOS) determines the species. Classifications didn’t change much in Peterson’s day, but modern DNA analysis makes it possible to better define whether regional populations of similar birds are actually the same species. The list changes every year.
Who keeps the list? I used to check them off in my guidebook — a permanent way to keep an impermanent list. I always feared losing it and having to start over. Later, I kept a spreadsheet, with backup copies. Nowadays, many listers rely on eBird, the free downloadable app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It tracks your activity and automatically updates checklists as species and names change.
The fate of my list — started in 1967 — is no longer in my hands. There is now a rule maker, an umpire and a scorekeeper. As of today, I have officially seen 657 species in the ABA Area, sort of.
Last week, I added a new bird to my list without ever leaving the couch. The AOS determined that warbling vireos in the east and west are genetically different, and reclassified them as two separate species. Since I’ve seen them in Maine and Alaska, I can be certain I’ve seen both new species. I hope eBird agrees.
I’ve been burned before. About eight years ago, I saw my first Cory’s shearwater at sea near Mt. Desert Rock, and added it to my list. But last year, the AOS determined that the Cory’s shearwaters nesting in the Mediterranean are different from the ones that breed on islands off the coast of North Africa. They split the species, and called the new one Scopoli’s shearwater. Since eBird can’t verify which bird I saw in 2017, it gives me credit for neither. I lost one.
I’ll get it back soon enough. Cory’s shearwaters appear regularly now, ever since climate change started heating up the Gulf of Maine. Scopoli’s shearwaters rarely visit. I’ll just need to verify my next sighting for eBird.
This year’s warbling vireo split is payback. The listing gods owed me one. Last year, the AOS decided the common redpoll and hoary redpoll are different color variations of the same species, and lumped them together as redpolls. I lost another species, again while just sitting on the couch.
Two types of birders are reading today’s column. Listers are nodding their heads, thinking “Been there, done that, it drives me crazy.” Non-listers are shaking their heads, thinking “No, you really are crazy.” The latter group is probably right. One danger of listing is that it becomes too easy to look at a bird as a checkmark, rather than a fun discovery.
Where did it all go so wrong? If I had just kept my checklist in that original guidebook, I might be all done by now. One thing’s for certain, it’s too late to start over. Or is it? I still have my Peterson.