Lifers

We all remember our first kiss. Most of us remember our first time behind the wheel. Some remember our first movie. How many remember our first Black-capped Petrel? I do: June 8, 2004, about 40 miles east of Cape Hatteras. A bit smaller than a crow, but with longer, more slender wings, it dipped and swooped across the wave tops, wheeling just above the surface, wing tips barely brushing the water. Elegance wearing grey and white feathers. Flying fish and a waterspout tossed in as icing on the cake.

We all crave the new, something different. This is what drives explorers to stagger on to the next horizon and artists, musicians, and architects to create. Something you have not seen before. Something not within your previous experience. Birders, indeed all naturalists, are no exception. Sure, it may be fun to watch the chickadees and nuthatches at the backyard feeder, but birders quest beyond this to be able to say "this is something I have never witnessed before". Most birders keep lists of their sightings; yard lists, state lists, all sorts of lists. The list all birders keep, if only in their head, is their Life List - the magic list of birds seen for the first time ever -life birds, lifers. The List is what drives hard-core birders, with their fogproof, nitrogen-charged, Zeiss and Nikon optics, to plan whole vacations around the next check mark. North America holds about 500 bird species, more or less. The hard-core travel to the corners of the continent; Newfoundland, Arizona, the Pribilof Islands in Alaska, and the Florida Keys in search of birds that have dribbled in from elsewhere. A few hit 600, a very few, 700, and one or two approach 750+. All for the sake of something not seen before.

I have a mild case of the fever myself. I'm pushing at the 500 mark and find that the more species I see, the harder it is to get the next lifer- the law of diminishing returns. I don't make any special plans; the Pribilofs are just a pipe dream, but I do tend to bird wherever I go. Sometimes I see a lifer under spectacular circumstances, like a White-tailed Tropicbird working the updrafts along the black lava cliffs of Kilauea Volcano.

Sometimes, like last Saturday, it gets a bit less prosaic. Pat and I drove to Delaware just to get away for part of the weekend. We strolled the boardwalk at Bethany Beach, browsed our second-favorite bookstore, and walked the windswept beach at Indian River Inlet. Given the cold and windchill, we didn't last too long and soon were headed south to Ocean City, Maryland. Ocean City Inlet in winter always has birders. Even in filthy weather they are there, with their down parkas and spotting scopes, working the surf and bay. Birders are friendly sorts, especially when they see the binoculars around your neck, marking you as one of the brother(sister)hood. One fellow offered me a look though his scope at a raft of Common Eider ducks beyond the breakers. He also gave detailed directions to find a Thick-billed Murre - an uncommon bird from the Arctic Circle. We went bayside, looking for people packing optics. Sure enough, we saw two and joined them. Ten feet off, bobbing in a small canal, looking for all the world like a bathtub toy, head tucked over its back, dozing and drifting with the tide, sat the Murre. It was something I had never seen before, a lifer. When the planet presents a gift, you respond. I whispered "thanks".