Tom Cole
1657 Words
In May of 1995, I was talking to a bird watching
friend and I remarked, “You know, I haven’t seen a long-billed dowitcher
in ages.”
“Why don’t you go over to Elliot and Cooper Roads?” he said. "There's a water recharge station there sponsored by the Riparian Institute. I've got dowitchers listed there every month of the year. This month is good for them, but you'd better get over there before June because most of them will be long gone by then."
The next Saturday I drove the four miles from my home to the recharge area in Gilbert, Arizona and I saw about a hundred dowitchers probing the shallow waters. On that Saturday, I got back into bird watching and I also made the first visit to what would become my Number One Site.
What's a Number One Site? Likely, you already have one. A Number One Site, to me at least, is a decent bird watching place close enough to your home that you can get there most any weekend. A Number One Site gets you out of the house and gives you a birding routine. Everyone's Number One Site is different, of course, and everyone decides which of their sites is number one. Your Number One Site could even be your backyard although to my mind a backyard doesn't really qualify unless there is some reason you can't go somewhere else -- or unless your backyard happens to be the best birding spot in your area. Don't get me wrong: I love my backyard list, but part of the benefit of having a Number One Site is getting away from home on a short trip with regularity.
Why have a Number One Site? Your Number One Site will help you keep your skills sharp, produce a regular record for both scientific use and personal enjoyment, and make you an authority on the area. I personally don't have as many birds on my life list as I could -- but I have 126 species on my Number One Site list and in this way I feel I'm doing just as well as people with 600 on their list. I don't mean this in a competitive way. I mean only that I am as involved in the hobby as those who have the time and money to make a lot of trips to Madagascar and Costa Rica to build a world list or those who hop around the US and Canada to get a long North American List.
Your Number One List
You could well be the best authority for creating a list for your Number One Site. There is already an official list for Elliot and Cooper Roads, my Number One Site. It's printed as a little pamphlet and it has some birds on it that I haven't seen there. There are, however, a number that I have seen that don't appear on the list, and I'm taking steps to see if they can be added.
With regard to this, it seems that everyone has their own ideas about what goes on their site list. For my part, if I'm driving and see a bird that I figure could be seen from my Number One Site, I go ahead and write him down. 'Heard only' birds also go on the list. I try to remember that listing is only a game and a hobby and it's best not to be so strict about verification that the fun is spoiled. On the other hand, there have to be some decent standards or a list offers nothing of personal or scientific interest. I once saw a small dark falcon flying low over a field and immediately thought it was a Merlin. I felt pretty sure it was one, but I didn't have a perfect view and so I didn't put it on the list until a expert told me he had seen a Merlin the same week about a mile away. That was good enough for me.
A Secondary Site
The place where I saw the Merlin is my Secondary Site. It's a vacant lot in town a mile long on a side. I often drop in on this site on the way to my Number One Site. It always seems that something unusual and surprising turns up there. In addition to the Merlin, I have Mountain Bluebirds there, a Solitary Sandpiper, and a few other excellent 'in-town' birds. One look at my figures for this site, however, makes it clear why I call this site secondary: its list has but 49 birds and I have made only 86 trips there as opposed to 126 and 356 respectively for my Number One Site. I have records for ninety-two other sites, but none of them has as many records for trips or birds or species as these two places.
Put Your Number One Site on your Computer!
Data from your Number One Site deserve to be recorded properly, so if you haven't done so already, go out and get a bird listing software program for your computer. Do this as soon as possible. Search the web or talk to other birders to decide which program to buy, and then get that software on your machine. Half the reason for having a Number One Site is to be an authority on the place -- but what kind of authority are you if you have to rummage through endless handwritten pages just to get information? Get the software, and if someone has a question or happens to be interested in your records for a particular bird, you can find the information almost instantaneously and, depending upon your software, perhaps throw in a few graphs and charts for good measure.
I have stacks of notebooks from every trip I've ever made to my Number One
Site, but leafing through all of those paper records is inefficient and not
especially rewarding. Yes, I had to type in all of my older entries into
my computer, but that work was actually kind of fun and certainly well worth
it: I now have the means to look at all of my data in any way I like, I can
track trends at my Number One Site, and I can instantly extract any specific
sparrow from all of the flocks of sparrows and finches I have ever recorded
there.
While your information is useful for scientific purposes, it will serve you more often just for reminiscing. Your Number One Site data -- along with all of the rest of your bird watching data -- give you reference points in life. They're not as important as births and deaths and marriages perhaps, but they are consistent and serve as a way to keep your memory of the years in order. You'll say, "I wonder how many times I've seen Wilson's Phalaropes at my Number One Site and you'll fire up your database and say, "Ah, eight times." and "Oh, look -- the May 4, 2001 sighting was the time I hurt my leg when I tried to jump over that cement canal. It was Kentucky Derby Day." and "Hey, I saw a Wilson's Phalarope in August of 1971 and didn't see another until May of 1998 -- a twenty-seven-year gap! I sure let my bird watching slip for a long time."
Obviously, these are examples that come directly from my own records, but you get the idea. Many of the birds you have seen will bring memories flooding back to you -- but only if you record them.
I always like to have a list of birds with a journal entry for that day below it. Some of the listing programs available may not have this feature or some other layouts you want, but in a pinch you can use the export and powerful sort mechanisms in most of these programs to create a journal or any other kind of report in your word processor. You might also consider making your own listing software with the database program that is probably already on your PC or Mac. Even if you are not a computer geek like me, with a good how-to book, you can make your own database and have everything set up exactly the way you want it. As an added bonus, you will improve your computer skills immensely. Access, Filemaker Pro, or Appleworks will work just great for you. Warning: developing with any of these programs is addictive.
The following is a typical trip to my Number One Site as viewed in the database I created for all my bird listing. You click on a list of birds, type in any comments, and the rest is organized automatically and can be sorted and viewed in endless ways:
“Why don’t you go over to Elliot and Cooper Roads?” he said. "There's a water recharge station there sponsored by the Riparian Institute. I've got dowitchers listed there every month of the year. This month is good for them, but you'd better get over there before June because most of them will be long gone by then."
The next Saturday I drove the four miles from my home to the recharge area in Gilbert, Arizona and I saw about a hundred dowitchers probing the shallow waters. On that Saturday, I got back into bird watching and I also made the first visit to what would become my Number One Site.
What's a Number One Site? Likely, you already have one. A Number One Site, to me at least, is a decent bird watching place close enough to your home that you can get there most any weekend. A Number One Site gets you out of the house and gives you a birding routine. Everyone's Number One Site is different, of course, and everyone decides which of their sites is number one. Your Number One Site could even be your backyard although to my mind a backyard doesn't really qualify unless there is some reason you can't go somewhere else -- or unless your backyard happens to be the best birding spot in your area. Don't get me wrong: I love my backyard list, but part of the benefit of having a Number One Site is getting away from home on a short trip with regularity.
Why have a Number One Site? Your Number One Site will help you keep your skills sharp, produce a regular record for both scientific use and personal enjoyment, and make you an authority on the area. I personally don't have as many birds on my life list as I could -- but I have 126 species on my Number One Site list and in this way I feel I'm doing just as well as people with 600 on their list. I don't mean this in a competitive way. I mean only that I am as involved in the hobby as those who have the time and money to make a lot of trips to Madagascar and Costa Rica to build a world list or those who hop around the US and Canada to get a long North American List.
Your Number One List
You could well be the best authority for creating a list for your Number One Site. There is already an official list for Elliot and Cooper Roads, my Number One Site. It's printed as a little pamphlet and it has some birds on it that I haven't seen there. There are, however, a number that I have seen that don't appear on the list, and I'm taking steps to see if they can be added.
With regard to this, it seems that everyone has their own ideas about what goes on their site list. For my part, if I'm driving and see a bird that I figure could be seen from my Number One Site, I go ahead and write him down. 'Heard only' birds also go on the list. I try to remember that listing is only a game and a hobby and it's best not to be so strict about verification that the fun is spoiled. On the other hand, there have to be some decent standards or a list offers nothing of personal or scientific interest. I once saw a small dark falcon flying low over a field and immediately thought it was a Merlin. I felt pretty sure it was one, but I didn't have a perfect view and so I didn't put it on the list until a expert told me he had seen a Merlin the same week about a mile away. That was good enough for me.
A Secondary Site
The place where I saw the Merlin is my Secondary Site. It's a vacant lot in town a mile long on a side. I often drop in on this site on the way to my Number One Site. It always seems that something unusual and surprising turns up there. In addition to the Merlin, I have Mountain Bluebirds there, a Solitary Sandpiper, and a few other excellent 'in-town' birds. One look at my figures for this site, however, makes it clear why I call this site secondary: its list has but 49 birds and I have made only 86 trips there as opposed to 126 and 356 respectively for my Number One Site. I have records for ninety-two other sites, but none of them has as many records for trips or birds or species as these two places.
Put Your Number One Site on your Computer!
Data from your Number One Site deserve to be recorded properly, so if you haven't done so already, go out and get a bird listing software program for your computer. Do this as soon as possible. Search the web or talk to other birders to decide which program to buy, and then get that software on your machine. Half the reason for having a Number One Site is to be an authority on the place -- but what kind of authority are you if you have to rummage through endless handwritten pages just to get information? Get the software, and if someone has a question or happens to be interested in your records for a particular bird, you can find the information almost instantaneously and, depending upon your software, perhaps throw in a few graphs and charts for good measure.
While your information is useful for scientific purposes, it will serve you more often just for reminiscing. Your Number One Site data -- along with all of the rest of your bird watching data -- give you reference points in life. They're not as important as births and deaths and marriages perhaps, but they are consistent and serve as a way to keep your memory of the years in order. You'll say, "I wonder how many times I've seen Wilson's Phalaropes at my Number One Site and you'll fire up your database and say, "Ah, eight times." and "Oh, look -- the May 4, 2001 sighting was the time I hurt my leg when I tried to jump over that cement canal. It was Kentucky Derby Day." and "Hey, I saw a Wilson's Phalarope in August of 1971 and didn't see another until May of 1998 -- a twenty-seven-year gap! I sure let my bird watching slip for a long time."
Obviously, these are examples that come directly from my own records, but you get the idea. Many of the birds you have seen will bring memories flooding back to you -- but only if you record them.
I always like to have a list of birds with a journal entry for that day below it. Some of the listing programs available may not have this feature or some other layouts you want, but in a pinch you can use the export and powerful sort mechanisms in most of these programs to create a journal or any other kind of report in your word processor. You might also consider making your own listing software with the database program that is probably already on your PC or Mac. Even if you are not a computer geek like me, with a good how-to book, you can make your own database and have everything set up exactly the way you want it. As an added bonus, you will improve your computer skills immensely. Access, Filemaker Pro, or Appleworks will work just great for you. Warning: developing with any of these programs is addictive.
The following is a typical trip to my Number One Site as viewed in the database I created for all my bird listing. You click on a list of birds, type in any comments, and the rest is organized automatically and can be sorted and viewed in endless ways: