The List Dad's hawks, shorebirds and warblers, and mine

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This is the part of Dad's life list I typed in. The whole thing is in a green ledger, one line for every new bird: the number, the name, the date and where. He kept it from March 1968 to May 1998. Mom said I could have the ledger. It's on my desk.

How to read it:

• The number is the order he saw them in. Number 1 is the cardinal fighting Grandma's car mirror. Number 547 is the last one.
• I put the birds in field guide order so the families stay together, which means the numbers jump around. To read it in his order you have to skip back and forth. I did that a lot this year.
• He wrote down the day too. I only put the month and year, so it fits on the screen.
• The early pages use the old names, like Marsh Hawk and Sparrow Hawk. I put the names they have now so you can find them in the book, and the old name underneath where he wrote one.
• When the bird people split one species into two, the new one goes on the next line of the ledger, with the next number, on the day it's official, even if you saw it years before. That's why Bicknell's Thrush is number 523 and not somewhere back in 1987. Dad never went back and changed a number. (Bicknell's isn't on this page because it's a thrush. It's on the main page.)
• He kept the vultures with the hawks, even after 1998. So did I.

DAD'S HAWKS

DAD'S SHOREBIRDS

DAD'S WARBLERS

That's 29 hawks, 47 shorebirds and 48 warblers, 124 birds out of his 547. The other 423 are the herons and ducks and owls and sparrows and everything else, and they're all in the ledger. If you want to know about one, write me and I'll look it up.

MY LIST

I started my own list on Saturday, September 4, 1999, at the hawk watch platform at Cape May Point, with his binoculars. I'm keeping it the way he did, in a green ledger (the stationery store had one that's almost the same), one line per bird: number, date and place. I'm going by his rules except for one. Heard-only birds don't go on mine. You have to see it. Sorry, Dad.

Number 1 was an Osprey, about nine in the morning, before I even sat down.

Here are mine so far, in the same three groups. They're all from Cape May. "Higbee" is Higbee Beach, the fields and woods along the canal, where I go at sunrise before the hawks get going. Bunker Pond is the pond in the state park behind the platform. The Meadows is the nature preserve on Sunset Boulevard.

My hawks

My shorebirds

My warblers

My total on September 26, 1999: 106.

Number 100 was on 9/19, a Dickcissel going over the platform. Mr. Cassidy had it by the call before I even found it. Then I found it, so it counts.

Still missing: Connecticut Warbler. Dad looked for five years. They come through Higbee at the end of September and into October, walking around on the ground under the bushes instead of hopping. I'll be there next weekend.

I'm not trying to catch him. 547 is his. I just didn't want the list to stop.

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Last updated September 26, 1999