[texbirds] Birding Nostaliga
- From: D D Currie <ddbirder@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2013 18:40:00 -0700 (PDT)
Dell has been helping me input my birding records into ebirds. It has been so
much fun re-living 30 years of birding. I want to thank Dr. Robert Neill (Univ
of Texas at Arlington) for getting me into birding back in college. I was
immediately addicted, reading field guides every night and developed into a
total birding nerd over night.
WARNING to ebird reviewers......there may be some strange sightings, but things
were really different in 1981, 82 and 83.
So.....some observations....I took an Ornithology Class from Dr. Neill in 1983
and kept a detailed (?) log of birds seen, When I recently reviewed the logs,
I was feeling really bad about my recordkeeping because of the bird names I
used, but......bird names have changed since 1983. Back then there were
Green-backed Herons, Common Ergets, Marsh Hawks, Olivaceous Cormorants (very
rare then), Long-billed Marsh Wrens, Common Crows, BobWhite Quail, Cardinals,
and Northern Orioles.
The other thing that is really amazing is that my field notes from the Upper
Texas Coast and from the Aransas area did NOT include sightings of Brown
Pelicans. In the early '80's, Brown Pelicans were very rare on the Texas
coast. Now they are common and no longer endangered.
Other interesting changes include the fact that Black Vultures were extremely
rare in the north central Texas area. Now, they can be more common than Turkey
Vultures.
I also remember moving into my house in west Arlington in the mid '90s and
having Inca Doves. I immediately called the Tarrant County rare bird alert to
report the rare sighting of Inca Doves. Now the White-winged Doves (also
formerly extremely rare in NCTX) have displaced Inca Doves.
So, the other thing I noted while trying to reconstruct 30 years of records is
how BAD I was at keeping records. I have scraps of paper with no date, no
location, no numbers, no county, no nothing other than a list of birds. I have
years of Tarrant County CBC results from the area I covered with no date (how
is that possible???). I have the most fantastic list of warblers seen in my
backyard in Arlington for the last 19 years, but not a clue when they were
seen.
Message to self and everyone else........please keep good records!!
Ain't birding fun!
D. D. Currie
Arlington, TX
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- » [texbirds] Birding Nostaliga - D D Currie
