What is a life list?

What words do birders use?

Life list

Every species of bird you have ever seen, each counted once. Also called a lifetime bird list; a species on it is a life bird.

Lifer

A species you see for the first time. It goes straight onto your life list, and it usually makes the day.

Spark bird

The bird that got someone hooked on birding. Ask a birder about theirs: most remember it well.

Year list

The species you see in one calendar year. It starts again on January 1; the life list never does.

First seen

The date and place you first saw a species. It's what turns a list of names into a list of memories.

Tick

Birders' slang for adding a species to a list. To tick a bird is to see it and count it.

Nemesis bird

A species that keeps getting away: you've looked for it many times and still haven't seen it.

Big Year

A year list taken as a challenge: as many species as you can see between January 1 and December 31.

More on the difference: life list vs year list. And the story behind one of these words: what is a spark bird?

What counts on a life list?

It’s your list, so you set the rules. Most people start with a few simple ones:

• Count each species once, however often you see it.
• Count wild birds, not birds in a zoo, a cage or an aviary.
• Count only what you’re sure of. If you couldn’t tell which species it was, leave it off.

Want a shared standard, for example to compare lists with other birders? The American Birding Association publishes Recording Rules for listers. In short: the bird was alive, wild and free when you found it, and you identified it to species, by sight or by sound. So under those rules a bird you only heard still counts, and a hybrid doesn’t count as a species.

Your total can also change without a new sighting, when scientists split one species into two or merge two into one: see bird splits and lumps.

Many birders keep more than one list: a life list, a year list, a list for their home state, even a list of the birds seen from their own yard. For scale, see how many bird species each state has on its official list, with more on Texas, California and Florida.

How do birders keep a life list?

In an app or on a website

eBird, run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, builds your life list from the checklists you enter: what you saw, where and when. iNaturalist works from your photos and sound recordings, which other people help identify. Both let you download your own records as a file. Here’s how to download your eBird data. Birds you save in the Cornell Lab’s Merlin app, signed in with the same account, go to eBird too: how to export your Merlin life list.

In a notebook

A field notebook or a printed checklist, ticked off by hand. Easy to start and lovely to look back on; harder to search. Which birding log book or journal to get.

In a spreadsheet

One row per species, with its name, the date and the place. Simple to sort, and simple to copy somewhere safe. How to type up a paper list.

How to start a life list and record your sightings

1. 1

   Pick one place to keep it

   An app, a notebook or a spreadsheet: whichever you’ll actually use. You can always move it later.

2. 2

   Write down each new species

   Note its name, the date and the place. Those three things are what make a list worth looking back on.

3. 3

   Add the birds you've already seen

   Go back through old notes, photos and trip memories, and add the species you’re sure of. If you only remember the year, write the year.

4. 4

   Keep a copy safe

   If your list lives in an app, download a copy now and then. If it’s on paper, photograph the pages or type them up (how to back up your records).

Free printable lifetime bird list

Rather keep your list on paper? Print this lifetime bird list at home: one line for each new species, with the date and the place. Print the second page as often as you need. If your list is in eBird, here’s how to print your eBird life list instead.

Download the life list (PDF)Year list version (PDF)

US Letter, two pages. No sign-up needed. Free to print and share for school and personal use. Please credit Birdfolio (mybirdfolio.com).

Already keep your list in eBird? See it as a bird life list book.

Milestones worth marking

Round numbers are big moments: the 100th species, the 250th, the 500th. So are the firsts: your first owl, your first warbler, your first bird in a new state or country. Write down the date. You’ll be glad you did. A birding festival, with its guided walks, is a friendly way to find a few new ones.

For scale, the American Birding Association’s checklist lists 1,161 species for the US and Canada (the ABA Area) as of January 2026, rare strays included. More in how many bird species are in the US and Canada.

Questions people ask

Do birds you only hear count on a life list?

Yes, under the American Birding Association’s Recording Rules, if you identified the bird to species with certainty. The rules count a bird “seen and/or heard”, and say a first identification “may be by sight or sound”, as long as what you heard sets it apart from every other species. Make sure it wasn’t someone playing a recording. The ABA’s rules are for lists sent to the ABA; your own list can follow your own rules. You might count them, mark them as heard only, or wait until you see one.

How many birds are on a typical life list?

Nobody publishes an average. In one 2013 study, 400 birders recruited online averaged 670 species on their life lists, and the 52 most active averaged 1,076. More figures, with their sources: how many birds the average birder sees.

From a list to a book

A life list holds years of mornings outdoors. Birdfolio turns it into a hardcover book:

• Every species beside a classic painting by the great bird painters (Fuertes, Audubon, Gould and more), or a credited photograph where no painting exists.
• The date and place you first saw each one.
• Your milestones, your first of each kind, and a map of where you’ve birded.
• Records that aren’t a full species, like a “gull sp.” or a hybrid, on an “Also recorded” page, so nothing is lost.

Bring your eBird download or iNaturalist export, or type a list with one bird per line. Look inside a Birdfolio, or if it’s for someone else, see gifts for birders or retirement gifts for birders.