Birding Competitions

"How many did you see? " says the gentleman with binoculars around his neck.
"We had 122." Replies the young man as he puts his birding guide back into his backpack.
"That's a good number for today, we managed to get 128. We were up all night listening for call notes of migrants," the gentleman chimes back in response.

Welcome to the world of competitive birding.

To the purist, the term competitive birding may be an oxymoron. How could an activity of watching our avian friends be competitive? Competition in bird watching really began with one birder telling another, "You'll never guess what I saw today?" The act of observing a bird, one that may be rare in a given area, gives the observer a higher status. That status makes others envious. The competition begins.

The origins of competitive birding probably are a direct result of the "Life List". The Life List is a birders written proof that they saw a particular bird, in a particular place, at a particular time. The bigger the list, the better the birder, or so one would surmise. Competitive birding uses the listing mechanic as its basis. Instead of a lifetime, lets take 24 hours, or a year, and count as many different bird species that we can see in that amount of time. To make it fair lets limit the geographic area. You must create a list, and from those lists we'll make the group or person with the most the winner. Winners and losers, this is competition in a nutshell.

Well even birders would cringe at the word, "losers." If I saw 155 birds in a day, would I be a loser? If I raised $5,000 for preserving endangered bird habitats, would I be a loser? No, of course you wouldn't be a loser, perhaps a non-winner. But competitive birding does open this can of worms. It creates those that win, and those that don't. Those that see more birds then others. We will put these people above others. We will create birding superstars.