The Curse of the Year List

My major objective, as with every birder, is to add as many birds as possible to my life list — the list of all the species I’ve ever seen.

But the list that always received most of my attention, the list I had the most fun compiling, was my year list. I had a tradition — every New Year’s Day, I’d get up long before my family was awake and go downstairs. I’d eat breakfast while looking out the window at our bird feeders. As the common backyard birds showed up, I’d dutifully write down their names and the exact times when I saw them.

In December, when it was time to put up our Christmas tree, I generally begged off as much as possible. Once I dragged the boxes out of the crawl space and set up the bare tree, I disappeared. I could get away with this because every New Year’s Day, I’d take the tree down all by myself. Every few minutes I’d wander over to the window to check for new birds. By the time noon came around and my family was starting to stir, the tree would be put away and I’d have eight or ten birds on my year list.

For the first six months of the year, I’d go birding regularly. I knew what birds to expect when, and where to find them. If it was a warm day with southerly winds in early May, it drove me crazy to be indoors. What if I missed a Blackpoll Warbler this year? Was it too late to see a migrating Winter Wren?

It was exciting, and I always got a kick out of compiling a list of more than 200 birds (which is pretty pathetic when compared to the North American record, which I think is 745 birds). Some years I did more traveling, and that meant more birds.

I thought it was great because at least once a year, it was exciting to see even House Sparrows and Eurpean Starlings Northern Cardinals and Black-capped Chickadees. I always hoped for a good bird for my first bird of the year, as though that would establish a trend.

Here are my totals for each year, along with the first bird I saw and the number of lifers I added:

• 1979 — 101 (House Sparrow) — 101
• 1980 — 185 (Ruffed Grouse) — 89
• 1981 — 195 (Black-capped Chickadee) — 24
• 1982 — 204 (American Crow) — 19
• 1983 — 193 (European Starling) — 13
• 1984 — 249 (House Sparrow) — 67
• 1985 — 131 (American Crow) — 0
• 1986 — 178 (Black-capped Chickadee) — 0
• 1987 — 89 (Mourning Dove) — 0
• 1988 — 147 (American Crow) — 5
• 1989 — 139 (Dark-eyed Junco) — 0
• 1990 — 210 (Northern Cardinal) — 19
• 1991 — 210 (House Finch) — 8
• 1992 — 122 (Dark-eyed Junco) — 2
• 1993 — 123 (European Starling) — 0
• 1994 —119 (European Starling) — 0
• 1995 — 146 (House Finch) — 1
• 1996 — 165 (House Sparrow) — 2
• 1997 — 216 (Northern Cardinal) — 7
• 1998 — 208 (House Finch) — 7
• 1999 — 262 (American Crow) — 13
• 2000 — 227 (European Starling) — 3
• 2001 — 251 (Dark-eyed Junco) — 21
• 2002 — 233 (House Finch) — 13
• 2003 — 205 (American Goldfinch) — 2
• 2004 — 174 (American Goldfinch) — 0
• 2005 — 190 (Northern Cardinal) — 3
• 2006 — 149 (House Sparrow) — 0
• 2007 — 173 (House Sparrow) — 2
• 2008 — 249 (House Sparrow) — 24
• 2011 — 1 lifer

You can clearly see that there is no correlation between desirability of the first bird of the year and the total number of birds seen that year.

My totals came down to three factors:

1. Did I go birding at least 30 times.
2. Did I do much traveling.
3. Was I birding on a few days when the weather/migration patterns were right.

In 2009, I began the year in my usual fashion. I had about 15 birds on my list after the first week or so. I was driving to work and spotted a flock of Canada Geese flying over the road and reached for a pen and paper to note the time and date. I suddenly realized that it was a chore. I didn’t really care. I was doing it because I somehow felt like I was supposed to. I quit.

I fully expected just to take one year off, but after fighting off a little bit of self-nagging in 2010, the habit was broken. In 2011 and 2012, I didn’t even think of keeping a list. In fact, during the winter of 2011-2012, due to some financial priority setting, we didn’t even put out bird feeders.

As I contemplate picking up my hobby again, I’ve decided not to keep year lists.

Yes, they made seeing common birds interesting at least once a year, but they also made seeing common birds interesting only once a year. Once I’d spotted an American Tree Sparrow, I didn’t pay attention to any others. I wanted new birds for my list.

Yes, they gave me a goal whenever I went out birding, but once I’d seen the birds I could expect to see, I wasn’t interested in going out much. It was the law of diminishing returns.

For now, I’m just going to look for birds — and that only when I’m in the mood. If I see extraordinary birds, great. If I only see ordinary birds, that’s fine too. I’ll look to see if they’re doing anything extraordinary. I’ll keep daily lists, but without setting any sort of goal. I’ll bird when I want to and stay out until I don’t want to stay out any more.

This might all sound rather strange to you, but if you’re a lister (of anything), you can understand what a radical shift in thinking this represents.

(The exception is my life list. I’ve decided to go for 500 birds. But that’s a topic for another post.)

UPDATE: In early 2017, shortly after we moved to Colorado, I decided to give eBird a try. All you have to do on that data base is add your day lists — or, even easier, keep your day list on the app — and eBird does all the rest for you. So I still have to find the birds and record that I found them, but I don’t have to maintain individual lists.