Howdy All! Here's the list of my favorite 25 birds of 1998 (about the top 3%). This was a tough selection. Culling through the list and picking birds that had a certain combination of rarity, beauty, and uniqueness was hard. I also took into account the experience, the moment of actually seeing the bird, too. I went through the list the first time and narrowed it down to 125 (more than I thought), then to 100, then to 50, then when I tried to knock it down to 20 I got stuck...so here it is, my favorite 25 (in taxonomic order): Red-billed Tropicbird Whooper Swan Spectacled Eider Mongolian Plover Spotted Redshank Far Eastern Curlew Great Knot Pin-tailed Snipe Ivory Gull Xantus's Hummingbird Berylline Hummingbird Nutting's Flycatcher Siberian Rubythroat Bluethroat Eyebrowed Thrush Dusky Thrush Gray Wagtail Pechora Pipit Rufous-capped Warbler Rustic Bunting McKay's Bunting Blue Bunting Brambling Oriental Greenfinch Hawfinch -Greg Miller Lusby, MD