My Favorite 25 Birds of 1998

GREGORY.B.MILLER@bge.com
Mon, 11 Jan 1999 11:17:04 -0500


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