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Re: Big day interpretation, amazing blooms



Thanks to Josh and Robin for trying to help me think about the mystery of
why we NC birders have higher state lists than do birders in other states.

Some of what the two of them say makes sense to me. I agree that we in NC
have a lot of good extensive habitat and having lived in Illinois for ten
years I can attest that they do not (at least no in the norhtern part of
the state where most birders live). It is also true that the presence of
the Outer Banks blesses us with many rarities (but it is not true that
Illinois does not have such geographically "edge" areas--Illinois has the
lakefront and Virginia the Chesapeake Bay). While good habitat and
geographic oddities may give us higher species counts for birds reported
in the state, does it explain why NC birders have seen a higher PERCENTAGE
of the total state list than birders in other states?

For others who may try to think about this I just wanted to clarify that
my question was not specifically about NC versus VA and IL. I merely
picked VA and IL since likeus they are estern states and they have roughly
the same number of species. But the discrepancy I mentioned is visible in
a comparison with other states as well. For example, Oregon has 485 total
species but only three Oregon birders have broken the 400 mark. And Oregon
has plenty of good protected habitat (so that a very large number of these
species should be easy to find as breeding or migrating birds there).
Oregon is also a well-off state with several large urban areas, and the
pelagic birding off the coast of Oregon is at lest good if not excellent.
I could cite other states also which point to the NC discrepancy.

Finally, Josh mentioned that we in NC are blessed with a small coterie of
very active birders who drive up the standard by inspiring us all to go
out rarity chasing, thus driving up the state lists for all of us. I am
not sure that the birding culture of NC is unusually blessed. I have lived
in California and Illinois and they both had their bird chasers. In fact
it seems inevitable to me that given a large-enough and affluent enough
group of birders there will evolve a sub-group that will actively chase
rarities and inspire others to follow intheir wake. I doubt we in NC are
exceptional in this respect. But one thing that is very different about
chasing rarities in this state (as opposed to Illinois) is that here in NC
it is a pleasure to chase rarities precisely because the state is largely
rural, and so driving 200 miles to see a bird is actually fun. In Illinois
the very thought of having to get in the car to drive through the urban
sprawl and into the hellishly bland wheat fields to get a rare longspur
was enough to make one feel sated before one even embarked on the project.
And thus, with a birding brain dulled by the midwestern landscape I tended
to stay put and concentrate on the city of Chicago. Hence my whopping sate
list of 147 after sojourning for a decade in the Land of Lincoln. Yes,
I'll take NC birding any day over anywhere in the midwest, but California,
now that's another thing altogether...

Shantanu Phukan

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SHANTANU PHUKAN
Lecturer in Urdu-Hindi & Indian Literature
University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Curriculum in Asian Studies
Alumni Hall 413C
Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599

phukan@email.unc.edu
919-962-6825
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