NeilyWorld      Birding Ottawa - Listers' Pages

         The Ottawa/Gatineau 50-km Checklist Circle, affectionately known as simply "The Circle", is a 50 kilomtre circle centred on the Peace Tower. For a graphic and further description of this area, see the Circle page.

         An Ottawa/Gatineau 50-km Checklist Circle Month Lifelist is defined as the total number of species of wild and unrestrained birds identified by a given observer within the checklist circle during his lifetime in a given month. There are 12 possible lists here, one for each month. Birds must be on the official area checklist to be counted. This includes all those on the latest OFNC printed checklist and those accepted subsequently by the Birds Records Subcommittee of the OFNC.

         An Ottawa/Gatineau 50-km Checklist Circle Best Month List is defined as the total number of species of wild and unrestrained birds identified by a given observer within the checklist circle during a given month in a single year. There are 12 possible lists here, one for each month. Birds must be on the official area checklist to be counted. This includes all those on the latest OFNC printed checklist and those accepted subsequently by the Birds Records Subcommittee of the OFNC.

         And there are slightly more exotic lists, such as a lifelist of the number of species seen in all 12 months or the total of all the month lists added together (and the average, of course). Have you been warned that listers can become quite obessive?

         We now have the month lists from both Bruce Di Labio and Bernie Ladouceur (two of Ottawa's top birders), who currently are one-two in every month for monthly lifelists and all but 2 single-year high months (for which Bernie lacks numbers). There are many other avid longtime month listers out there, and you are all invited to submit your totals. Perhaps someone will have a new high out there, or be stimulated to try to set a new standard. If you have not played this game before, you may want to simply go back over your field notes to get counts, as your compiler has done. Hopefully, this will be something to give your birding added interest and fun on a monthly basis.