New Life Bird!

Jeanette this morning in our car, bundled up against the freezing cold, binoculars in hand, searching the fields of Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge for a rare bird, a Ruff. To our great good fortune, our birding friend Brandon Wagoner was already parked along the road busy, searching with his spotting scope. A little later, as he worked his way further down the road, he called on his cell phone to say he had found the Ruff! It was a new Life Bird for us.

Serious birders keep a "Life List".  This is a list of bird species they identify for the very first time.  It starts out quite easy and builds fast as you add one bird after another.  But the longer you keep at it the more difficult it becomes to find a brand-new species you have never seen before. Years ago, it was a daunting task, usually with a paper list, to keep track of what you had seen, or what was new.  But now with e-Bird.org, it's simple, and your list is saved for you and available via the Internet and you know automatically when you find a new bird that it is a Life Bird.

This year has been amazing year for us here in little rural Polk County. On January 27th we were shown by some other birders a Field Sparrow, a bird normally seen on the Eastside of the Rockies.  This sparrow was first found by Brandon Wagner and was a first for the State of Oregon. On February 10th we again profited by the experience of other birders, and Rick Bennett pointed out a Black-and-white Warbler, a first for Polk County.  Today we excitedly added a Ruff, not a record for Oregon, or Polk County, but a new addition to our Life List, which now stands at 328 species.