Subject: Re: Banding/listing
Date: Jun 8 14:57:36 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


>Now, on this listing thing, I'll show my listing ignorance yet again when I
>ask, just WHAT is the 700-club? I assume you don't mean a religious
>organization. Is this an implication that if you really try, you can see
>700 birds on the North American continent? And how many avid (read any
>other adjectives you like into that) birders have reached these exalted
>plateaus?? Just curious...
>
>Teresa Michelsen
>temi461 at ecy.wa.gov

Well, Teresa, I just received my copy of Birding, and with it is included
the AB A 1994 List Report, a huge compendium of who has seen how much.

The "700 Club" of course includes those people who have seen 700 or more
species in North America (north of Mexico). At one point in time this
concept was considered unlikely, but person after person has surpassed the
threshold, and now there are no fewer than 188 people in this group
*listed* in the list report, and surely a fair number who aren't listed.
Even more cosmic, there are 5 people in the relatively newly formed *800
Club.* That would certainly have been considered impossible only a decade
or so ago, but these people are committed, let me tell you. It wasn't that
many years ago that there weren't even 800 species on the entire North
American list. I assume the only way you can qualify for such a club is to
fly, without hesitation, to anywhere in North America where a bird turns up
that you haven't seen. It would be interesting to graph the annual income
against the position on the list of the top 10, top 100, and top 1,000.

The relationship between a big list and birding expertise may be evident in
the fact that the only 3 people in the 700 Club with Washington addresses
are scarcely known to the Washington birding community!

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416