>> Back to Tacky Topics

The Couch List

Most birders keep a life list. I keep a couch list. Here's why.

I am a birder, a watcher of birds. I hesitate to tell people this sometimes, because non-birders don’t always understand the attraction of birds, such as why someone would rise early on a cold winter morning, and hike in the snow for hours, just because she’d heard a report of a great-horned owl somewhere in Howard County.

Most non-birders have heard of a life list, a list that many birders keep of every bird they've ever seen. When I am asked how many birds are on my life list, I don't know what to tell them. I don’t keep one. It's not a requirement of being a birder.

One person, a non-birder told me, that I was not a “real” birder because I don’t keep a list. That’s just cuckoo. When I see a bird I've never seen before, I know it. It's very exciting. I don't need a list to tell me that! If I'm mistaken, and I have seen it before, what kind of killdeer would expect me to check my list to be sure?

There's something Zen about bird watching. It's one of those things that keeps a person in the moment. Sometimes I'll be tired and hungry from hiking, and I think that all I want to do is go home. Then I'll see a pileated woodpecker and I'll watch it happily for a half an hour, not remembering the feelings of discomfort from minutes before.

The fact is, I do keep a list, but not of every bird I’ve ever seen. I keep a couch list. This is a list of every bird that I’ve seen from the comfort of my couch. Because although I live only a couple of miles from the District of Columbia, I’m in a neighborhood that hasn’t seen significant development in the past couple of decades. There is also a system of storm water management ponds only a block from my house. Birds find both these features appealing, and so I can boast a wide range of birds that I’ve observed from the comfort of my couch: herons, hawks, woodpeckers, and a variety of songbirds such as cardinals, wrens, and sparrows.

But, even my couch list isn't a true list, since I have only been keeping it in my head. So, for one full year (2006), I’m going to keep a written list (like the so-called “real” birders do) of just the birds I’ve seen from my couch. As of this writing, I’ve got twenty species on the list, and I haven’t even gotten to the spring migration season yet.

Update 4/16/2006: I'm up to 30 species right now. I'm particularly happy to have an Eastern towhee. It's a beautiful bird about the size of a robin with bold patches of black, white, and rust. If you've ever been outside and heard a bird that sounds like it's saying "drink you tea," that's a towhee. Maybe that's why I'm so fond of that bird. We are all delighted to get advice that we are already willing to take, and tea is one of my favorite beverages (it's the other brown drink).

I'll keep working on my couch list, even though I'll never be able to equal my sister's accomplishment. There's an escaped peacock that has been loose in her neighborhood for the past year, and he's often been seen in her yard. No one has been able to trap it, because apparently peacocks have a nasty temper.