The trick with games is making sure everyone is actually playing. I am a lister--I have always kept track of the birds I see, all by state and date, many by county, city, and location. But I don't like using birds as a tool for establishing my superiority or for winning or losing anything. I just like watching and listening to them, and listing them for some anal-retentive reason I've never understood. I've had over 300 birds on my Minnesota list since the 80s--all birds that would be accepted by the current rules, but what would be the value for me in posting my totals? I keep "questionable" birds by MORC standards on a separate list just because that's the way I do it, but that doesn't mean I'm playing the same game as anyone else. Would I feel like a "winner" or "loser" knowing my list is higher than X's list but nowhere near as high as Y's? Some of the best birders in the state travel all about chasing down rarities and discovering many of their own. I've also known some fairly mediocre birders who also chase rarities and get big lists. Some of the best birders stay closer to home because of personal responsibilities or because they don't want to waste natural resources or because they've got a passion for the birds in their county or backyard or because they're lazy or a hundred other reasons. Except for the very top of the list--people both lucky and gifted enough to have had the time, resources, and skills to find a lot of the birds first that everyone else chases--setting up a false hierarchy by list totals seems silly to me. I'm a birder, and belong to the ABA and MOU, but would far rather my dues go to conservation and research than to supplying all the paper and time to policing a game only a small percentage of MOU members even play. ABA is, of course, a birding organization, and a case could be made that many or even most members joined specifically for the sporting elements of birding. But MOU is ostensibly an ornithological organization. I guess it seems like my dues are subsidizing a game that I simply don't find any value in.
The way I keep my lists, I wouldn't count a bird seen in someone's basement. But it IS significant to see a particular bird that happens to be the first Costa's Hummingbird ever recorded in Minnesota, even if it IS in a basement. Laura Erickson Duluth, MN Producer, "For the Birds" radio program <http://www.lauraerickson.com/> There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. --Rachel Carson
