GREENE CO., MO. — Today was a simple day. Robins sang cheerily, incessantly. Titmice, chickadees, gnatcatchers, grackles, and swifts came and went. Downy Woodpeckers piped softly in the woods, and a flicker yelped once or twice.

I found a robin’s egg while planting new acquisitions in the northeast bed. It had fallen without breaking, and I left it where it lay.

Chipping Sparrows trilled forcefully. The bluebirds have another clutch of eggs.

I photographed hummingbirds before dinner. Their tiny wings whirred near my ears. They squeaked and tittered and scolded each other. They hovered still, they flew up and backward and in great arcs. Only one male came. Eighteen inches before my eyes, his throat glittered green-gold then went black. He zipped up, out, and back, and then he gleamed like a firelit ruby.

Toward sunset, I drove to Truman Elementary School to watch the nighthawks. I wasn’t disappointed. They flopped erratically over the parking lot and fields, sometimes gliding, sometimes fluttering. There were scissor-tails, too, and kingbirds.

Scattered clouds clung pearl-blue-gray, and the west glowed.

I drove home and sat down in the driveway. Fireflies flashed green — tiny creatures, living their lives, producing light inside their bodies, all to survive, and they don’t even know. What a mystery.

Pewees whistled as darkness fell, and then the bats skimmed across the sky.

GREENE CO., MO. — I’ve been working on my life list again, trying to get ready for all the lifers I’m going to rack up in PNG.

I had been using a database based on the AOU checklist, but now I’ve moved to a world database. I’m trying to follow Clements’ list, but I couldn’t find it available for download anywhere (at least not in a format I could do anything with). I found one that claimed to be similar but had to spend several days cleaning it up and reordering everything. For the sake of time, I left some sections untouched (like the babblers) and will have to work on them when and if I ever encounter representatives of those taxa.

Clements’ list is actually rather different from the AOU’s, especially in the sequence of families and sometimes species. I learned quite a bit going through it all, but with over 9800 records, it was a little difficult to absorb everything.

So I’m sitting at a modest 415 species. It’s certainly nothing remarkable, but it’s not terrible either. If I weren’t so picky about what went on the list, it would probably be 15 or 20 species higher — maybe more.

But of course it’s not about the numbers. Life birds special, and a little mystical. I usually need to see a bird and get to know it pretty well before it goes on my list. I haven’t listed Western Screech-Owl, Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet, Chuck-will’s-widow, or even Whip-poor-will because I’ve only heard them. I didn’t list the Green Kingfisher because it was a brief and horrible look from very far away, and I didn’t list Virginia’s Warbler because I was too sloppy in the field and didn’t really see what I needed to see.

I often ask myself, “If I never had a chance to see that species again, would I be satisfied?”

It took me a few years to get in the groove. For awhile, birds popped on and off my list faster than wedding rings from Elizabeth Taylor’s finger. The decisions weren’t cavalier, however. Certain additions and removals were accompanied by greater pangs of conscience than some people have probably experienced in their entire lives.

I look over my list from time to time, for it is filled with memories, thrills, and longings. There are holes, of course — embarrassing and inexplicable gaps like Philadelphia Vireo and Golden-winged Warbler. Some birds have been on my list since the first one I ever made (I must have been about six): robins, mockingbirds…. And of course there are the gems: Masked Duck, Lucy’s Warbler, Broad-billed Hummingbird, Great Gray Owl….

Here I am at 415: 415 birds of which I can say, “I have seen you; I have known you.”

What’s next? Hard to say. I read today in “Birds of New Guinea” that Raggiana Birds-of-paradise are “often encountered in most habitats in eastern NG.”

Maybe the best is yet to come.

GREENE CO., MO. — In about two weeks, I will be in Papua New Guinea. I’m studying my field guide every day and trying to imagine what a gerygone sounds like, what a treeswift looks like, whether I’ll see a frogmouth, and so many other things.

Meanwhile Shroud, who is in Longview until early June, tells me that the House Finches have returned to their forky abode and have laid four more eggs. Wow.

GREENE CO., MO. — Lunch just having ended, I walked into my room and glanced out the window. Two House Finches and a Chipping Sparrow hopped on the ground. A little bird flew into the lowest branch of the feeder tree — a Blackburnian Warbler! I recognized its brilliant orange face and throat immediately, even without binoculars. I grabbed for the binocs and watched him hop up, peck at a gnat, and flit away as quickly as he had come.

My appetite was whet, of course, so I kept looking out the window over the next couple of hours. The bluebird pair was hunting actively, and I finally located their four recently fledged youngsters huddled high in an oak. I went outside with my camera and tripod to photograph them, but the endeavor was not too successful. They were distant and not very tolerant of my presence.

A Black-throated Green Warbler dropped into view, a tiny green caterpillar grasped in the vise of his slender bill. The caterpillar disappeared, and the warbler moved deliberately along the oak branches. His colors glowed — radiant gold, deep black, pure white.

The Blackburnian Warbler reappeared, burning like a live coal among the rich green leaves.

Nearly five years ago — May 26, 2000 — I saw my life Blackburnian Warbler in this yard. That was our first spring here, and that was the spring my desultory interest in birds flamed into a passion that’s never gone away.

It started with a vaguely yellowish warbler that I never could identify. Warblers was a section of the field guide I’d never paid much attention to. Then, on April 2, a tiny brown bird flitted through the top of a still-naked elm. I saw a bright patch of yellow just above its tail. Next were a parula and a Nashville Warbler on the 25th.

Each bird that appeared was a challenge to name; I studied them thoroughly and pored over my field guides. There were singing Tennessees, a Bay-breasted Warbler one Sunday, a blackpoll, a redstart. They kept coming through the month of May, and then on June 3 I joined Greater Ozarks Audubon for a field trip — my first ever. I never looked back: I was a birder.

The blackburnian moved slowly through our trees this afternoon. It’s hard to believe five years have passed. High school is gone, and now college is gone. I’ve birded from coast to coast and north to south. I’m about to leave my home and my country. But this afternoon, I am here, and so is this Blackburnian Warbler.

RITTER SPRINGS PARK — Charley had birded hard all week, and Lisa isn’t a morning person anyway, so we didn’t get started till 8 a.m. A couple new to Springfield — Herb and Renee — had come out to join us. Two Yellow-throated Vireos sang during our introductions.

Swainson’s Thrushes were everywhere. I glimpsed a Kentucky Warbler briefly. Lisa thought one singing vireo was a Philadelphia, but we couldn’t ever see it.

We headed down the gravel road toward the pavilion on foot. Early morning’s thin clouds cleared quickly, and the sun began to warm the treetops. A first-year redstart sang with gusto but — blotched with black and lacking bright colors — looked kind of pitiful. I caught a female Chestnut-sided Warbler moving high and fast and showed her to Charley. He need her for his Missouri year list, so he thanked me and said, “Now, I need a blackburnian and a bay-breasted.” Thankfully, such unmitigated greed is only a front. At heart, he’s a birder, not a ticker.

A Wilson’s Warbler and a Common Yellowthroat skulked low. Lisa turned her attention to the treetops, searching for a singing oriole. She raised her voice: “Well that’s a … bllaaub … ddyahhh … flycatcher! … mahhh … up there!”

“Up there” in a dead treetop was a preening Olive-sided Flycatcher. Its back was turned to us, and the puffy white tufts on its sides gleamed brightly in the sun.

After a nice long look, we engaged in the obligatory ridicule of Lisa’s weird vocalizations. Then Charley and Lisa reminisced about Olive-sided Flycatchers seen on previous trips. I don’t think I’d seen one since Jason and I went to the Rio Grande Valley in 2001, but perhaps I’d just forgotten.

The rest of the walk was pleasant if unremarkable. The overnight rain had not produced a warbler fallout, but we did encounter a few species. We saw a few parulas, and Lisa and I heard a Blue-winged Warbler. We saw two singing Magnolia Warblers. If I ever knew their song, I’d forgotten, and Lisa had to teach it to me again. Charley and Lisa got a quick look at a Mourning Warbler, but all I really saw was movement.

Least and Acadian flycatchers sang, and a Barred Owl called from down near the river. Towhees were abundant, and I saw a newly fledged, almost tailless cardinal crashing around in a bush.

Back at the cars, we sat chatting with Renee and Herb. A small bird in the brush caught my attention. It was brown and streaky with touches of yellow. “Yellow-rump,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t. Nothing about the little warbler made sense to me — fine streaks, yellowish throat. The others saw her briefly before she flitted on her way. “Palm?”

Lisa didn’t think it was a palm, but no one offered any other suggestions. Charley got his Sibley, and we thumbed through the pages for a couple of minutes. Not palm … not pine … not blackburnian … not supposed to happen to birders like us.

It was a female Cape May Warbler. That’s a good bird for southwest Missouri, and we should have been excited. But the quick, casual look at the bird and our inexcusable consternation over its identity left us more confused than excited.

WEST CENTRAL MISSOURI — Black-bellied Plovers, at least a dozen of them, were clad in a variety of blacks, grays, and whites. Four stately Whimbrels rested quietly amid the dowitchers, which moved quickly and kept probing the mud with their rod-like bills.

A few Stilt Sandpipers, beginning to show traces of their rusty cheeks and dark-barred bellies, stuck together on the edges of the dowitcher crowd. A colorful Hudsonian Godwit wandered freely in and out of the fray. Two White-rumped Sandpipers — sides marked clearly with dark chevrons — hung back with the Stilt Sandpipers.

Though feeding, resting, and preening just then, all of them were driven relentlessly north by the very power that gave them life. Some were bound for the fringes of the continent — patches of tundra above the Arctic Circle where the summers are short and the world is unforgiving. They are compelled to fly, fly, fly and then to breed. The ritual is simple and ancient. They are participants in the great dance of this wild, untamable world. Their own existence is fleeting, but there were others before them, and there will be others afterward.

And there, on that sunny afternoon, we crossed their path. We saw them in the shallow water, driven to the ground by hunger, or exhaustion, or a storm, but soon they would be back in the sky pushing northward, ever northward.

Lisa’s choice of Schell-Osage Conservation Area demonstrated once again her remarkable ability to sense the “bird force,” as she and Charley call it. Finding good shorebirds in our area is very difficult because habitat is scarce and ephemeral. Fields and marshes are often either too wet or too dry (or just empty of birds), but today was perfect.

In addition to the shorebirds, dozens and dozens of Black Terns skimmed the lake and rested on the flats. A lone Common Tern was with them, and we had good looks at its deep reed bill and dark flight feathers.

Throughout the refuge, willows swarmed with Cedar Waxwings — hundreds of them. Redstarts, yellowthroats, Warbling Vireos, Yellow Warblers, catbirds, Yellow-billed Cuckoos, and Indigo Buntings sang. A Black-billed Cuckoo flew across the road and stayed out on the edge of the trees long enough for us to see it very well.

After Schell, we stopped by a prairie near Taberville because I wanted to see a Henslow’s Sparrow. We parked and started down a path mowed through the prairie. We saw a drab little Ammodramous-type sparrow singing a very high, tinkling song. Lisa and I had heard the song earlier in the day and been perplexed. It was a Grasshopper Sparrow’s secondary song, which neither of us had heard before.

The Henslow’s were exceedingly uncooperative. Walking through the grasses, we flushed several of the mouse-like birds but never got looks at them. They sang all over the prairie, but the songs never got any closer as we approached them.

We started back up the hill toward the parking lot and met a small, boyish man with a clipboard and some little flags in his hands. He explained that he was researching prairie mole crickets.

With Dickcissels’ songs ringing in our ears, we got in the Jeep and headed home.