[mou] Re: [mnbird] listing game

[Laura Erickson]

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