…or not.
After a long hard summer, it’s great to be off to the Azores. A bit of rest and relaxation and some bird watching with some fairly hard-core birdwatchers. They want to see American birds.
That poses a very immediate and interesting question. Why not go to America? That’s where the birds are. Surely it would be easier to see them there? And that is self-evidently true. But there is a deeper answer to that question.
And the deeper answer to that question reminds me of an experience from over 20 years ago. We were watching another American bird – a Ring-necked Duck (Aythya collaris) – that had happened to turn to just outside Romsey, Hampshire UK. We were chatting to other birders and one couple said that they were about to go look for a Dartford Warbler (Sylvia undata) at some place in Berkshire. Being the generous types that we are, Jan and I offered to show them a site about 15 minutes drive away that was very reliable for seeing Dartford Warblers. “That’s very kind, but no thanks,” came the slightly surprising response. “You see, it wouldn’t be a Berkshire Dartford Warbler,”
And that’s when we got introduced to the idea of complex bird lists.
Everyone keeps a bird list. Even friends who phone up and say there’s this thing the size of an eagle in their their garden with yellow and red on it. “What is it? Can you come round and tell us?” (It’s a Goldfinch. It’s almost always a Goldfinch.) Once they’ve learnt Goldfinch they’ve got a list of one.
We certainly always kept a list. One list of birds we’d seen anywhere. But the Ring-necked Duck couple were the first to make us realise that where you saw the bird could be a little important. And 20 years later we are on trip with people who want to see American birds – or any other birds for that matter – in the Western Palearctic (WP for short). The Western Palearctic is roughly Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The United States, and all their lovely birds, inhabit a different ecozone – the Nearctic. And that’s why people come birdwatching in the Azores. It is the westernmost land in the WP, and therefore the most likely to be home to American birds that get blown off-course whilst migrating up and down in the US of A.
Some people take this very seriously indeed. The people we are on holiday with, for example. One or our companions only needs to see two more bird species in the WP and his WP list will be 800. I think that is a probably a good number and will put him well up amongst the top WP listers. By comparison, our WP list is only around 405.
Yes we now keep a WP list. And a garden list. A world list. A Hampshire list. Computerised record keeping means all lists as just the touch of button away.
So how are we getting on, on our hard-core WP listing holiday. Well, next time I get a wifi connection I’ll let you know more.
