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aba checkList and checkList codes The American Birding Association has a list of all of the birds that have ever been documented in the ABA area, which can be found at http://www.aba.org. This is the list that an ABA big year birder studies, drools over, rejoices over, and weeps over. For the less than absolutely fanatic birder, it may be surprising to learn that each of the bird species that has ever been observed in the ABA area has been assigned a code that is intended to correspond to the likelihood of the bird appearing in the ABA area. When planning a big year, it is very useful to pay attention to these codes to determine which birds are most worthy of spending extra effort to find. The ABA codes may be briefly summarized as follows: Code 1 and Code 2: regular breeding species and visitors to the ABA area, with Code 1 birds being more widespread and usually more numerous and Code 2 birds having a more restricted area, being in lower densities, or more secretive; Code 3: rare birds that occur annually in the ABA area in very low numbers, including visitors and rare breeding residents; Code 4: casual birds, not recorded annually in the ABA area, but with six or more total records, including three or more in the past 30 years; Code 5: accidental birds, recorded in the ABA area five or fewer times, or fewer than three times in the past 30 years; and Code 6: birds that cannot be found, due to being extinct or extirpated from the ABA area, or all are in captivity or releases are not yet naturally reestablished. Unfortunately, although these codes generally reflect reality, the process of finding birds is made more difficult by the fact that birds do not know their groupings and do not always behave predictably. In fact, they often behave as if they are deliberately trying to ruin the system. Why else would a normally common sparrow (or gull or warbler or . . . ) suddenly become difficult to find? Even if you know that a bird is uncommon or common, that does not get you to the bird. No bird is common everywhere, and some quite rare birds can be very common in a restricted locale. But if, in addition to noting a species’ ABA Code, you bird often enough, you begin to get a good idea of whether a particular bird that is sought will be difficult to find. A big year birder must “get” all, or as many as possible of the Code 1, 2, and 3 birds as soon as possible , so that when a Code 4 and Code 5 bird shows up, the big year birder can preface xvi spare the time to chase it. Chasing Code 6 birds is not a normal part of a big year birder’s plans (unless the big year birder is convinced that a bird formerly classified as extinct, such as the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, really still exists somewhere). At least that’s the theory on which I worked. No matter how hard I tried, however, I could not figure out a way to get some of the birds that I really should have found. For example, in my ABA big year, I never found a Connecticut Warbler, which does not normally migrate through Texas (my home state). When they were singing on their northern breeding territories, I was in Alaska, north of where Connecticut Warblers breed. When I returned to the lower 48 in July, Connecticut Warblers were silently lurking in the north woods raising their broods. I missed them in fall, too, because I did not know where to position myself in their southward path along the East Coast of the United States, and I did not have time to just sit somewhere and wait for one of them to pass by. Even if I had tried to intercept them during their southern migration, I might still have missed Connecticut Warblers for the year, but I will never know. I was off doing other bird chasing. A breakdown of my sightings in 2008 indicates (to the best of my counting ability) that in 2008 in the ABA area my list included 492 of the 492 Code 1 birds; 167 of the 170 Code 2 birds; 41 of the 71 Code 3 birds; 16 of the 92 Code 4 birds; and 7 of the 115 Code 5 birds. No Code 6 birds. aba...

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