“List, list, O, list!”* Confessions of a reformed transgressor *the ghost in Hamlet 1:5:758 Birders, once addicted, almost inevitably become hoarders. In the old days, they shot and stuffed birds, then installed them in the parlor in bell-jars. Now, lists—-of birds envisioned, birds sought and found, birds missed and yearned for—-have become the fruits of birding. Lists occupy the landscape of the past as well as the horizons of imagined days to come, sparking memories of luck and derring-do as well as the comforting rhythms of the seasons. Building significant personal lists for the whole world, or a continent, or a taxonomic category like hummingbirds or seabirds, requires leisure time and money that few possess, but most of us can hope to amass respectable local lists, lists we can reasonably hope to add to fairly regularly. At least for a while. Nothing encourages listing elsewhere more than a seemingly stalled Ohio list. If you have 390 for Ohio, new additions will come as often to your list as lightning-strikes, even if you go out and chase thunderstorms. Eventually, so rare will new local species be that you are more likely to find yourself adding—-or losing—-ticks for Ohio as you sit in your living room, studying the noodlings of the AOU’s Committee on Classification and Nomenclature. You will likely soon develop new interests in building lists of birds seen at your yearly vacation spot in the U.P., or during Florida trips. Soon enough you will contemplate vacations in Arizona, California, Alaska, or, yes, January in Minnesota--planned with at least some listing in mind, and you will be truly addicted. A bird-list record must record, at a minimum, a species name, a date, and a place. To the evidentiary requirements of what/when/where, addicted listers may add more---birds seen with one's husband, birds photographed, birds heard vocalizing, et cetera. These additional requirements personalize listing, increase its difficulty, and additionally—and sometimes significantly--make one’s list harder to compare with those of others. The latter consideration is worth thinking about. My experience is that the birders with truly long lists are willing to share their numbers if asked, but that only the wannabees add their names to lists of listers’ lists. For many, the need to put a check-mark next to a bird name is an addictive behavior. To accumulate ticks, an addict will improvise by tallying county lists, or year lists, or county year lists. Soon you might have as many ticks as a two-dollar dog. Some have imagined having their cars emblazoned with an oil company’s logo in return for coupon savings on fuel. I should add that there is exactly zero evidence that listers selfishly want to keep their sightings to themselves; indeed, electronic communications such as this one are constantly used to announce finds, and flash mobs may result for the rarest of them. These gatherings may puzzle the public at large, but listers listen. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]