Listing & Listers

Not all listers are twitchers…

Many (but by no means all) birders are inveterate list keepers. Some settle for a world life list… a list of all the species of birds they have seen at home and abroad, others will also keep a list of their home country (see the UK 400 club website) and separate lists for each country they have visited. Still others will keep a list of every state or county and one just for their patch. Others keep year lists; a list of all the species seen in any one year — usually in the home country.

Some indulge their need for lists in almost bizarre ways keeping lists of birds seen in non-birding TV programmes; birds seen from toilet windows or even birds seen whilst caught short!

Perhaps it is all about competing with other birders – wanting to be champion birder of the world or your own backyard. Maybe, and I think this is more likely the case, it is a form of collecting. From my point of view it is far better to collect records of sightings than follow the collectors of the Victorian era by collecting specimens of the birds themselves or, and some evil morons still do this, collecting their unborn young!

For some this is not sufficient record and they must take photographs of every species they see… I am glad someone does as it adds to my enjoyment greatly to see portraits of my favourite birds (well any birds really). It is still only done by a minority of birders… something non-birders find hard to believe. I have lost count of the number of times when I have revealed my obsession to a non-birder that I have been asked if I take pictures of them. It seems that people who don’t bird-watch assume that there must be some sort of end product or the pursuit cannot be rationally explained. I usually counter by asking them if they take pictures of whatever pastime they indulge in… such as do you take pictures of the little ball falling down the hole after you have hit it with that stick when talking to golfers.

In the UK 400 species seen is regarded as the goal [the Fat Birder is stuck at 375) and less than this figure means you will not even make the league tables. In most English counties a target of 250 is set for the ambitious (Fatbirder’s Home County (Kent) list is 301]. We would love to hear from other countries what the target is.

I do not know what the target is for a world list. I believe that there are now considered to be around 10,500 species and that at least three birders have notched up 9500+ ticks. Currently, (July 2019) the list is headed by the Swede Claes-Göran Cederlund on 9,622! [iGoTerra includes 57 heard only] The two others (Brits) are Philip Rostron (9607) [Seen\ and the late John Hornbuckle (9600) [Seen IOC]. At least ten people are past 9000 and 24 passed 8500.

Phoebe Snetsinger had seen 85% of the world’s birds. Phoebe had a working list of about 10270. It didn’t matter whether she worked on this list, Clements 9800 or the 1976 Gruson list of 8600, the percentage still came out as 85%. It was of course an incredible achievement and one, which looked unlikely to be exceeded as she continues to collect ticks post mortem as various sub-species are elevated.  Unsurprisingly a number of the world listers in the top twenty are full time bird tour guides.

Surfbirds have put up a league table of the top World listers that anyone can add oneself to and wikipedia has a list too. For anyone new to our pastime (obsession) please bear in mind that a long list of species seen is only one motivation for taking up birding, and this is only the case for some birders. Many leading ornithologists do not keep lists of any sort!

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Dutch Listers …feedback from Pim A. Wolf submitted the following on Friday, February 4, 2000

Holland has it’s listers too, birders lists with less than 350 species in NL are seen as unremarkable despite the small size of the country and shorter national list than the UK. The ranking is sorted out by Leo Heemskerk and regularly updated on the Dutch Birding Association Website. Some more statistics, highest scoring woman is Anja Nusse at 417 (45 in the total ranking). There are 104 Dutch Birders with over 400 species in the Netherlands. Remember the Netherlands are roughly the size of southeast England. This is almost as large as the chunk from Norwich via Northampton through Reading south to Portsmouth. The only serious competition for the British are the French but I have no idea what number their top listers are at. – Pim Wolf (no 109 at a rather low 398 in 23 years of birding). Our top listers at the time of writing were:

1: Klaas Eigenhuis 436; 2: Gerard Steinhaus 435; 3: Aart Vink 434; 4: Hans ter Haar 433; Jan van der Laan 433; Alexander Buhr 433; 7: Cock Reijnders 432; *: Wim Wiegant 431; 9: Enno Ebels 430; 10: Edward van IJzendoorn 429