Audio Recordings for Life List?

Nature Talk
1

Should birds that you only have audio recordings of, count for your personal life list?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
1 Like
2

Are you talking about iNaturalist’s life list, or a life list you’re keeping on your own?

1 Like
3

Personal life list that you are keeping on your own. Just curious if some people consider hearing a new bird a lifer. I personally don’t, but I’m open for opinions.

1 Like
4

Yes, we consider heard-only as counting in our life list. We do not promote one sense (seeing, hearing) over another for our personal records.

We consider the activity to be birding or inatting (as opposed to bird watching specifically)

2 Likes
5

This earlier thread on a similar topic may be relevant: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-are-your-personal-bird-list-rules/39003/

6

Due to lack of experience, patience, and equipment, I am not much of a birder. I do like birds very much, though.

Overall, hearing a bird and having a recording is enough for me to put it on my personal life list, but for some species, I really want to see them and take a photo as well. So I do like to keep track of which species I have seen, heard, or both.

For example: I heard a black woodpecker in the forest near me once, but didn’t get to see it. Getting a good photo of that would still be something on my bucket list, even if I already have that species on my life list.

1 Like
7

I absolutely count heard birds for my life list. (ABA 730+ / World 1630+)

I have several owls, rail, and neo-tropical wrens which I have never seen (would love to!), but trying to see them would be disruptive to them and their habitat.

Moreover, there are many birds which can best be separated from their other similar species in their genus by voice.

1 Like
8

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.