This one hurts. It took me a long time to add a hoary redpoll to my life list. Now, it’s no longer considered a separate species.
In July, the American Ornithological Society decided it’s just a frostier version of the common redpoll.
I feared this day would come. On average, the hoary redpoll is paler than the common redpoll, and it tends to breed farther north in the Arctic. All my life, the two have been deemed separate species.
But through improved genetic analysis, scientists have concluded that common and hoary redpolls are just different races in the same species.
Roger Tory Peterson pointed out the differing field marks in his 1934 edition of “A Field Guide To the Birds.” That same book included a checklist of North American “life birds” one could hope to see in a lifetime.
From an early age, I wanted to see them all. Little did I know that it would be a moving target.
Redpolls nest across the Arctic regions of North America. They travel southward in winter, although not reaching Maine every year.
Since I was old enough to read that first field guide, I’ve anticipated their arrival, hoping to find that one frosty individual that would let me check hoary redpoll off my life list.
It took 40 years.
One frigid winter day, a swarm of redpolls invaded my backyard, mobbing the bird feeders. Among them was a frosty bird with all the telltale field marks. It was brighter, rosier across the chest, and displayed virtually no breast streaks. Its butt was white, not brown.
Ka-Ching! I finally had my lifer. That is, until this year when the Ornithological Society took it away.
I haven’t had my childhood fantasies dashed this badly since astronomers demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet. Darn you, science.
Keeping a life list was simple back in my youth. You see a new bird, you check it off. But our understanding of the world keeps improving. Change is inevitable.
In the same announcement that torpedoed my hoary redpoll, another redpoll got delisted. The lesser redpoll, a European bird, has also been reclassified as a common redpoll subspecies.
Three became one.
It works the other way, too. Maine has nesting house wrens, but so do many places in the Caribbean. DNA analysis led ornithologists to agree that these isolated populations had evolved away from each other.
Our familiar house wren is now one of seven different species. Seven!
Until this year, barn owls in North America were considered the same species as barn owls in the Old World. They look the same, but sound different. Barn owls have now been split into three species.
You win some, you lose some. When scientists lump two species together, my life list dwindles by one. But when they split one species into multiples, I can add to my life list without ever leaving the couch, provided I know I’ve seen both in their respective locales.
That’s where things get more complicated. The American Ornithological Society determines what a species is. The American Birding Association determines where it is.
Only living, wild birds officially count on the association’s life list. Birds that may have escaped from captivity don’t count. Wild birds only count if their feral populations become locally sustainable. Thus, birds may count in one location, but not in another.
This year, I discovered that the Harris’s hawk I saw in Arizona 20 years ago was not on my official list. The chukar I saw in Colorado in 2014 was not on my list, nor were six species seen in Miami.
When I checked them off years ago, I did not record the specific location, so the automated scorekeeper kicked them out.
Here is where it gets even more complicated. I used to check off each new bird in my Peterson guidebook. Now, I use the eBird app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It automatically tracks my sightings and compiles my list.
But unless it knows where I was when I saw a lifer, it won’t add it to my total. Nor does it add a bird that might be an escapee. Whoops.
Despite the demotion of my hoary redpoll, I’m still looking forward to winter birding. Anything can happen.
Winter is when the great black hawk appeared in Portland in 2018. Winter is when the Steller’s sea-eagle made it onto my life list.
If only 9-year-old me had known bird listing would get so complicated, I might have taken up stamp-collecting.
