Contestants drove around the wilderness with a list of birds; the winner was whoever checked off the most species.
Among the newest and slickest birding apps is BirdsEye, whose main trick is to use your exact location to provide a list of birds you might see.
It returns a list of birds that roughly match the details you select out of a long list of parameters, including location, size, colors and wing shape.
A list of birds seen on a given day is also a form of prayer, a thanksgiving for being alive at a certain time and place.
In 2010, they were added to the general licence, a list of birds that can be killed without a permit if they are causing significant damage to crops.
(I met someone in Norfolk once who kept a list of birds he had seen on television, not counting nature programmes, but flitting past in, say, Neighbours; apparently, the Falklands War was very good for skuas).
A homeless man named Marty who said he grew up in College Point and twice flew out of the airport in his youth watched the geese swoop past and rattled off a list of birds he has seen there: hawks, kingfishers, an eagle and even an albino pheasant.
Keep a list of birds you think you can confirm.
We had put together a list of potential bird flu hotspots to visit; almost all were rejected by the ministry as being "too far", "speculative" or "unconfirmed cases".
For the birder in me, I have to say the opportunity to pick up a list of endemic birds that would make Bill Oddie green with envy would be hard to resist; six species of bird all with the prefix Socotra (a giveaway when spotting endemics in a field guide); such as the Socotra sparrow, Socotra bunting and the Socotra sunbird.
