1, 2, 3...

Who's perched atop the pile? 

Maybe because we're in the summer doldrums,* a friend recently got the itch to tally up his Louisiana list to submit to the ABA, and he urged me and a few others to do the same.  My total (403, see Booby post below) doesn't measure up to the others in the exercise and probably never will.  I've seen all of the "easy" birds for the state, so each addition to the list now becomes a mini-Everest, and that means there's a whole lot of Himalayas between my list and those in the 420s and 430s.

In comparing the lists of the leaders, we had to figure out what birds are eligible for lists. There's no List Police, but obviously a level playing field is in order.**  We basically went by the common sense rules that have been employed in the past for Louisiana Big Years: Species can't count if they're not on the U.S. list (House Crow), not on the Louisiana list (Monk Parakeet, feral/introduced Canada Goose, Budgies, other exotics), or pertain to sightings of individuals that weren't documented and/or weren't accepted into the state record.

Most of their list totals will make their way to the ABA site little by little.  Feel free to pass my total, I'm not in it to win it.  I may know how to count, but I just want to see birds.  

*I actually like the summer doldrums, and even though I wasn't able to watch birds much this summer, a recent trip in the suffocating heat revealed roadsides loaded with ragweed and ready for migrants.  Fall is in the 100 degree air!

**The issue of creating a level playing field has come up before and might reemerge soon.  A recent glance at eBird shows that a couple of birders are in the 320s/330s on their year lists and stand a fair chance of breaking the state Big Year record if they get lucky.  The only complication is that no one really knows what the Louisiana Big Year total is.  The lists of past competitors that have claimed the title aren't available, but I think the number to beat is about 350, give or take a bird.