The well-rounded birder

In the November/December 2019 issue of BirdWatching, Pete Dunne wrote the intriguing article “My Take on Listing” (pages 14-15). I did not realize that none other than Roger Tory Peterson may have been responsible for kicking off the idea of a life list, at least in this hemisphere, in the second edition of A Field Guide to the Birds (1947). I have that field guide. “My Life List” begins on page xxi with Common Loon, for which I had provided a “sanctifying checkmark” in 1958.

I keep a life list, probably because I believed early on that’s one of the things real birders do. Why would I doubt RTP? A life list is the only type of list I keep. For me, it’s what I see on planet Earth in my lifetime that is interesting. Other spatial and temporal boundaries don’t matter because they are all artificial. Pete said, “I like birding, but I dislike bookkeeping.” I agree with that, too. My very old