Summing Up My Life List

With the new year fast approaching, I was thinking about all the unusual birds I was able to see this year.

Life list (Margo D. Beller)

Every serious birder keeps a "life list" of birds seen, from the humble to the rare. As life lists go, mine is rather small - 352 - for someone who has sought out birds for more than a decade. Much of my list includes the birds we see every day but this year I was able to see a record (for me) high of four "new" birds because I had the time to do it. I was irregularly employed this year, and when I did work it was from home. So it was easy to make the time (tho' not always so easy to get MH to join me).

It seems every year a number of birds not found in my part of the world show up, either blown off course by strong winds or a bad sense of direction.

My life list is a photocopy of the list at the end of the 1947 edition of Roger Tory Peterson's guide to finding eastern birds. This is still considered by many to be the best birding guide ever published because it introduced Peterson's system of identifying field marks. But in 1947 many birds had different names and since then new birds were "created" when the birding bigwigs decided to split what had been one species into two or more (or vice versa). On my list I've also added many western birds I've seen in my travels. Several of my "new birds" this year are ones I realized I had not added when I first saw them: The Wilson's storm petrel and the pomarine jaeger seen from a whalewatch boat out of Gloucester, Mass., were numbers 350 and 351. My list has become so marked up and confusing (my photo is of the front page, not the marked-up back page) I've had to transfer the information to a bound volume MH bought me for that purpose, which is how I discovered the omissions.

I can go many years between finding "life birds." For instance, I saw No. 344, a Connecticut warbler, in October 2013, and No. 345, a roseate spoonbill, in May 2018. It was not for lack of trying. Many times we've gone to where a rarity was reported only to be disappointed, such as the boreal chickadee we were told we had just missed at the feeders of the Merrill Creek reservoir in March.

It was in December 2018 my employment became irregular, and that is how I was able to leave home and find these birds originally found by others:

No. 346 was a female Barrow's goldeneye, a western duck discovered at Merrill Creek. We traveled there on a very cold day in March 2019 for the duck and the boreal chickadee. The duck turned out to be easier thanks to the sun spotlighting the duck's round, brown head and yellow bill, and the arrival of Henry Kielblock, the founder of the Scott's Mountain hawkwatch located at that very parking lot. He had driven up to see the duck, pointed it out to us and then realized who we were (we visit this hawkwatch at least once a year in the fall). After he drove off, a pair of redhead ducks flew in, an unexpected bonus.

"Black-Headed Grosbeak" by jamesbadger is licensed under CC BY 2.0

No. 347 was a black-headed grosbeak, another western bird, reported at a feeder not too far from my home. Many had already seen and photographed it by the time I drove over in April. I learned that when you "stake out" a bird, bring a chair. I had not, but a kind man who had driven up with his wife from central Jersey gave me his seat as we waited from the top of the homeowner's driveway. We were soon joined by others. It was 45 minutes before I looked up and saw the bird's black head and orange breast (the file photo above is of a female, notable for the wide white "eyebrow"). It never came down to the feeder and I had a bad case of "warbler neck" but after watching it for 10 minutes I left satisfied.

No. 348 was a Henslow's sparrow that came from the midwest to the sprawling grassland preserve known as Negri-Nepote. Grasslands are in decline as they are built upon for housing developments, office parks and warehouses. Many had seen the Henslow's sitting in a particular shrub singing away, but when we walked out to the area on a very hot July 6 we almost missed it - it was hunkered down atop a different shrub nearby and not singing as it tried to stay out of the way of several redwinged blackbirds. But I saw the identifying field mark - a dark spot near the eye - and that would have to do.

No. 349 was an upland sandpiper, another bird in decline because of decreasing grasslands. On Aug. 24 we followed the directions given in the various bird reports and parked at the Burlington County (NJ) fairgrounds. There were already several people there, one with a spotting scope. I scanned the area with binoculars but only found a large number of killdeers. The man motioned us over and showed us the upland sandpiper. He then pointed out a couple of sanderlings (usually found on beaches), a pectoral sandpiper and a golden plover. We've often found birds thanks to the kindness of strangers.

The last of the new birds, No. 352, was a Nelson's sparrow on Oct. 12. The Nelson's is one of those birds created when the birding bigwigs decided to split the sharp-tailed sparrow into two types, the Nelson's and the saltmarsh. Both look very much alike. I had seen saltmarsh sparrows in a marsh in southern Maine years ago but was never completely sure if that's what they were. That changed when I found the Nelson quite by accident as I trailed MH hurrying (for him) back to our car as we were completing the Liberty Loop trail near the Wallkill River at the NJ-NY border. When I am seeking birds I walk far slower than MH with his gimpy knees, and as I was approaching the last curve something flew up and looked at me from the top of a shrub. It had a lot of yellow-orange in its face and neck, so I knew this was an unusual bird. I looked in my books and realized I had finally seen a Nelson's, which can be found at freshwater marshes.

There are birds I seek out every year but this year I found a number of birds I haven't seen in years - blue grosbeak, Tennessee warbler, least flycatcher - on trips I took alone to places relatively close by. That was when I would be restless because of my underemployment and needed to get out to give my days a sense of purpose.

But now I have a new job that takes me away from home, and my birding time is again limited to weekends. I'll have to make the most of the time I have.