The 10% Club - Milestones (1 Viewer)

With eBird currently recognizing 11,017 species, my sighting of species number 1101 (Western Meadowlark) today puts me at having observed 10% of the birds of the world! I wanted to share and thought it would be fun to have a thread for milestones. Thinks like 500 in a country, 100 in a county, etc. Feel free to share your milestones.

I hit a quarter of all bird species (IOC) a couple of years ago but, because the list has grown due to splits, I've dropped below that threshold again by about 8 species.

I'll pass the 25 percent mark again in Taiwan in a couple of weeks, hopefully by a much wider margin this time.

Well technically, 1101 birds is only 9.994%, you would need 1102 to surpass 10% 😜. Anyway, my main goal for now is 200+ species for my home county year list.

Many of the species in Clements are extinct, how many of those 11017 are actually extant?

raymie said:

Many of the species in Clements are extinct, how many of those 11017 are actually extant?

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Hmmmm. With that in mind.... The more species go extinct, the higher the percentage of exiting species most of us will have seen (assuming very few people actually see rare species which are on the brink of becoming extinct).

Frank van Drogen said:

Hmmmm. With that in mind.... The more species go extinct, the higher the percentage of exiting species most of us will have seen (assuming very few people actually see rare species which are on the brink of becoming extinct).

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It's quite depressing to think that especially some of the younger folks among us will, if they look back at their lives several decades from now, will have seen quite a few extinct species.

As for milestones, for years I've had the number 3000 in my head (without guides). I'm at 2518 currently so I'll almost certainly get there a few year from now.

After that, I'll perhaps focus on specific families, e.g. see all hummingbirds (of which I'm currently at 101/366)

YuShan said:

As for milestones, for years I've had the number 3000 in my head (without guides). I'm at 2518 currently so I'll almost certainly get there a few year from now.

After that, I'll perhaps focus on specific families, e.g. see all hummingbirds (of which I'm currently at 101/366)

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There are a couple of tricky birds there, security wise, and a good number of tricky birds, difficulty/logistics wise.

Glow-throated is hard to access (Cerro Hoya) and far from guaranteed once there.
Colorful Puffleg is basically not accessible for security reasons though occasionally it is semi-palatable for the intrepid.
Gorgeted Puffleg is AFAIK totally still not doable due to security.
Santa Marta Sabrewing is close to being accessible. It was a bit of a unicorn for some time with the supposed sightings largely being very stringy. Now, finally, sites for it are known but Colombian researchers and guides are working with the communities to setup tourism before all hell breaks loose, so not quite yet.
Chiribiquete Emerald is doable at the moment, you can fly in and get it at the airstrip.
Sooty Barbthroat is very hard and requires days of persistent searching in one spot in French Guiana to have a fair shot. Even better, the subsp in Amapá, BR, may well be a good species and is much less known and presumed to be more difficult.
Rufous-webbed Brilliant is AFAIK still extremely difficult, I've not heard of any reliable individuals or sites, ever, just a couple of lucky encounters for folks who have spent enough time in the right areas.
Short-crested Coquette is in a very sketchy area. There was a window a couple years ago where a few people managed to see it but the area's gotten spicy again and AFAIK it's off limits again.
White-tailed Hummer is in the same area as SC Coquette but I think there might be a safe site for it in Oaxaca for those who are willing to put in some legwork.
Buff-breasted Sabrewing is, I believe, recently possible in PN Canaima (Venezuela) after being logistically nearly impossible for basically ever.

A few of the Amazonian hummers can just take a really long time to connect with depending on luck, ie Fiery-crested Awlbill, Black-bellied Thornbill, Raquet-tipped Thorntail, Butterfly Coquette come to mind.

Plenty of species, ie some of the other Coquettes, Humboldt's Sapphire, Black-breasted Puffleg, Diamantina Sabrewing, etc can be challenging depending on if you can get to a good site at the right time of year and have a bit of luck, they require some dedication.

Plenty of species are sort of "well doable" but logistically difficult or expensive like Juan Fernandez Firecrown, Chiribiquete Emerald, the Tepui species, Blue-bearded Helmetcrest, etc.

If the Phaethornis Hermits get further split there likely will be some pretty hard ones in there too!

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few as well. I've seen just over 300 species but of all the ones I brainstormed above, I've only seen 4. I do not anticipate ever cleaning up the hummers...

YuShan said:

As for milestones, for years I've had the number 3000 in my head (without guides). I'm at 2518 currently so I'll almost certainly get there a few year from now.

After that, I'll perhaps focus on specific families, e.g. see all hummingbirds (of which I'm currently at 101/366)

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Too many hummingbirds are basically inaccessible.

I want to see all the cranes in the wild, which is much more doable. Only 15 and I already have 2.

Have 3 goals for my birding life:

1. See over 60% of all bird species (currently at 15% with 1702 species seen, no heard-onlys in my life list yet).
2. See and photograph all of the bird families, so far I'm 57% through that with 143 of the 249 families seen, with the most recent additions being Tropicbird and Tody in Jamaica.
3. Bird in all of the terrestrial biogeographic realms, so far explored Nearctic, Neotropical and Afrotropical, missing 5 more.

I'm having trouble not reading the title as a jumbled-up version of the 10 mile high club ... ;-) Sorry! On a more serious note I'm probably in the 5%+ camp. Haven't given any other milestones any thought, but should do perhaps ...

Because splits and losses etc will always happen, is it better to be pragmatic and not aim for a totally accurate % of the world total? - as the world total is always going to be a in a state of flux and is essentially un-knowable anyway (species undiscovered, what are the boundaries between subspecies etc etc)??

If my count is correct there are 181 extinct (or probably extinct) birds in the Clements taxonomy. This means there are only 10,836 extant birds in the taxonomy, and only 921 species are needed to reach 10% of extant species.

I’m currently at 26% of the Clements/eBird list (2,853). My next major goal is to reach 3,000. If I don’t achieve that goal during my next trip later in the year, then I should get there next year.

After that my goals will increase by increments of 500: 3,500, 4,000, etc.

Dave

dantheman said:

I'm having trouble not reading the title as a jumbled-up version of the 10 mile high club ... ;-) Sorry! On a more serious note I'm probably in the 5%+ camp. Haven't given any other milestones any thought, but should do perhaps ...

Because splits and losses etc will always happen, is it better to be pragmatic and not aim for a totally accurate % of the world total? - as the world total is always going to be a in a state of flux and is essentially un-knowable anyway (species undiscovered, what are the boundaries between subspecies etc etc)??

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Given the altitude, you'd either have to be on the space station or taking your girlfriend for a spin in your U2, do the seats fold down

pbjosh said:

Rufous-webbed Brilliant is AFAIK still extremely difficult, I've not heard of any reliable individuals or sites, ever, just a couple of lucky encounters for folks who have spent enough time in the right areas.

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This was on my list from Hacienda Amazonia, but from 2004, when only the Clements & Shany guide was available, so my ID did not rest on very solid ground. It had been nagging at my conscience for a while, this was the last straw and I have now removed it from my list.

The dept. of Putumayo in Colombia may be a hotspot for Butterfly Coquette. Sadly Puerto Leguizamo (where it was seen regularly) is not safe at this time, but I know that one bird has regularly been coming to a birder's garden in Puerto Asis in recent days, so this might be a species that could get staked out in the near future.

cajanuma said:

This was on my list from Hacienda Amazonia, but from 2004, when only the Clements & Shany guide was available, so my ID did not rest on very solid ground. It had been nagging at my conscience for a while, this was the last straw and I have now removed it from my list.

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My guess is at some point this bird will become reliable somewhere, there's plenty of habitat out there. Almost all "mythical" hummingbirds eventually get sorted out, at least temporarily, and over its range on the E slope of Peru there is a lot of forest to explore are arguably fewer security issues than in, say CO at the moment.

cajanuma said:

The dept. of Putumayo in Colombia may be a hotspot for Butterfly Coquette. Sadly Puerto Leguizamo (where it was seen regularly) is not safe at this time, but I know that one bird has regularly been coming to a birder's garden in Puerto Asis in recent days, so this might be a species that could get staked out in the near future.

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I've personally had some poor luck with many of the Coquettes and the two hard Thorntails. I've actually put quite some effort into trying to see a lot of them. I'm still completely missing Racket-tipped Thorntail and Peacock, Spangled, Butterfly, and of course Short-crested Coquettes. I've managed to see what most likely was BB Thorntail sort of decently but even that I feel is one of my stringiest semi-ticks. When pressed, I'm sort of relying on the map more than being certain I saw it well enough to separate from Wire-crested. So ticked or not, it's still a bird I consider that I need to see. I've only seen a female Tufted Coquette, I've only seen White-crested once, and not very close. Hummingbirds can be pretty annoying and so frequently the pay-off is poor views, backlit birds perched way too high, shaggy plumages, etc. I particularly think Coquettes are overrated and I'll go down with the ship on this viewpoint

Just a bit of provocative fun with my granola and tea

And to get back to Tyler's original post, I know it sounds really cliche but I don't have any milestone or particular goal from a numbers perspective. My eBird "life list" is kind of messy with heard only birds in there and it wouldn't surprise me if some species had slipped in from birding in a group and I forgot to delete it from my list.

But I'm a diehard "lister" at the same time in that I'm super psyched to see new birds and to try to see birds well and I love travelling and trying to see everything, particularly hard species. There are some families/groups that I think are tremendous and I put in a lot of effort to see - Antbirds, Antpittas, Gnateaters, Hornbills, Woodpeckers, Tubenoses, Corvids (particularly Jays), Babblers, Alcids...

What I do spend too much time pondering and researching, and what I get a genuine chuckle out of is trying to get needs lists for regions or countries down to zero. Like if I see Corn Crake there will be nothing for me in Liechtenstein (major achievement there lol). Comoros I have no possible lifers (though it's also one of the least surveyed countries and there must be myriad African vagrants that I would need that have gone undetected). Uruguay is down to one but not a lot of hope of that one (Speckled Rail) at least short term. I have five random birds that are best seen in other places that keep me from having the northern Central American countries down to zero possible lifers...

I actually find all these stupid factoids and little things like this more interesting and more motivating than the actual life list. I'll never be up near the top of the rankings and I don't really care among my friends who has seen 1k species, who 4k, and who has 9k species... we all just go birding for fun and to see new places and birds and have some laughs

pbjosh said:

There are a couple of tricky birds there, security wise, and a good number of tricky birds, difficulty/logistics wise.

Glow-throated is hard to access (Cerro Hoya) and far from guaranteed once there.

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easy. just hike up

pbjosh said:

Colorful Puffleg is basically not accessible for security reasons though occasionally it is semi-palatable for the intrepid.

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easy. Has been seen last couple of weeks.

pbjosh said:

Gorgeted Puffleg is AFAIK totally still not doable due to security.

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a bit harder, yes.

pbjosh said:

Santa Marta Sabrewing is close to being accessible. It was a bit of a unicorn for some time with the supposed sightings largely being very stringy. Now, finally, sites for it are known but Colombian researchers and guides are working with the communities to setup tourism before all hell breaks loose, so not quite yet.

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easy in a year from now.

pbjosh said:

Chiribiquete Emerald is doable at the moment, you can fly in and get it at the airstrip.

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yes, very easy.

pbjosh said:

Sooty Barbthroat is very hard and requires days of persistent searching in one spot in French Guiana to have a fair shot. Even better, the subsp in Amapá, BR, may well be a good species and is much less known and presumed to be more difficult.

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easy but area is underwatched.

pbjosh said:

Rufous-webbed Brilliant is AFAIK still extremely difficult, I've not heard of any reliable individuals or sites, ever, just a couple of lucky encounters for folks who have spent enough time in the right areas.

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easy if you spend time in the good area. Very easy in Sira.

pbjosh said:

Short-crested Coquette is in a very sketchy area. There was a window a couple years ago where a few people managed to see it but the area's gotten spicy again and AFAIK it's off limits again.
White-tailed Hummer is in the same area as SC Coquette but I think there might be a safe site for it in Oaxaca for those who are willing to put in some legwork.

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Both easy if you know your drug warlords.

pbjosh said:

Buff-breasted Sabrewing is, I believe, recently possible in PN Canaima (Venezuela) after being logistically nearly impossible for basically ever.

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easy indeed in Canaima, very easy to reach with a helicopter

pbjosh said:

A few of the Amazonian hummers can just take a really long time to connect with depending on luck, ie Fiery-crested Awlbill, Black-bellied Thornbill, Raquet-tipped Thorntail, Butterfly Coquette come to mind.

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All very wide spread so easy if you spend enough time in the Amazon.

pbjosh said:

Plenty of species, ie some of the other Coquettes, Humboldt's Sapphire, Black-breasted Puffleg, Diamantina Sabrewing, etc can be challenging depending on if you can get to a good site at the right time of year and have a bit of luck, they require some dedication.

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Dedication is what makes us go birding, so not a problem.

pbjosh said:

Plenty of species are sort of "well doable" but logistically difficult or expensive like Juan Fernandez Firecrown, Chiribiquete Emerald, the Tepui species, Blue-bearded Helmetcrest, etc.

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Work harder so you can spend more money.

pbjosh said:

If the Phaethornis Hermits get further split there likely will be some pretty hard ones in there too!

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Which ones? They all look the same... Maybe better to lump them?

pbjosh said:

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few as well. I've seen just over 300 species but of all the ones I brainstormed above, I've only seen 4. I do not anticipate ever cleaning up the hummers...

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Believing you can do it is 90% of the work.

Well done. There are no hard birds, only lazy birders, right?

On the Phaethornis front, possible splits off the top of my head:

For hard ones, particularly Great-billed Hermit has a few that are likely to be carved out. Certainly margarettae which is vocally distinct in flight and the song at the lek is very different. Interestingly, there may even be a cryptic species within margarettae, when it gets split it should likely have a new subspp described which itself may warrant species status. Murici might be the only reliable site for northern margarettae though I guess new sites would get found if it does get split. I think there's a new site for southern margarettae so perhaps not as hard as it used to be. As well ochraceiventris is somewhat frequently mentioned. I don't remember vocalizations off the top of my head for that one.

Hook-billed Hermit is considered monotypic but inland / foothill birds sing differently than coastal birds and at least within the split-happy BR ornithological community this is viewed as a likely one. Neither is really hard but the inland one is pretty local.

Maranhão Hermit from Cinnamon-throated Hermit seems a good split though neither of them is hard.