Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 14:41:27 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Laura M. Appelbaum" Subject: Lists MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sometimes I think all birders must be obsessive-compulsive what with the seemingly endless lists folks come up with (Life birds, State birds, County birds, birds seen at Camden Yards, birds heard while watching a televised golf game, etc, etc) ... and then I'll talk to someone who has been birding for sixty years all around the world and *they're* the one person who'll say they've never kept a list! Me, I've been birding since 1990, but I've only got 281 birds on my Life List (and that's including birds I saw on a trip to the Middle East), mostly because I'm always too busy fixing the house or working during peak season. (Well, that and because I don't believe, on principle, in "chasing" birds. The Snowy Owl in Buckystown a couple of years ago was my one and only exception. IMO, if I burn up extra gasoline in order to catch a glimpse of an out-of-place bird and thus help promote drilling in ANWR, well, that doesn't compute). Maybe if I'd seen more birds, I'd be tempted to keep multiple lists like alot of the folks on this ... list do ("Montgomery County birds," "Cloverly, MD birds," "birds heard while in the bathroom ..." ;D), but I keep it fairly simple; three lists; one is all the birds I've ever seen including at rehab centers and zoos, one is my actual ABA-style Life List (but with those Israeli and Jordanian birds on it), and one is a intermittent list of species to my backyard feeders, which only gets added to once in a very long while. OTOH, I do keep a list of each and every *book* I've read cover-to-cover -- started it in October of 1986. I'm reading book number 1,007 right now. If books were birds, I guess I'd be a heavy-hitter. LMA ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================