ARLINGTON, TEXAS — Rock Pigeons. Great-tailed Grackles — bowling pins on wings. House Sparrows. Great Egret. Gull high away.

I’m always birding, but sometimes the commute is all the time I’ve got.

2005 was an unrepeatable year. Great Gray Owls, Evening Grosbeaks, Hudsonian Godwits, Willie-wagtails, White-tailed Tropicbird, Superb Fairywrens, Red-bellied Fruit-Doves. American Woodcock, Pyrrhuloxias, Chihuahuan Ravens. I didn’t manage to keep a year list, but it would have been sweet. I know there were over 100 life birds.

But after all that, my life list is still comparable to what one crazed birder can see in one oversized state in one very lucky year.

By the end of 2006, that sobering fact will no longer be true. I’m not keeping a list this year either. It’s fun … for the first day or two, and I always sort of wish I’d done it in the end. Maybe I’m too lazy, but I’d like to think it isn’t that.

Our New Year’s Day nightjar is likely to have been a Common Poorwill, according to some Texbirders, including Mark Lockwood. The species’ wintering habits are still poorly known. Evidently they can enter deep torpor and tough out some winters. It can’t be listed of course. Didn’t see it well enough for that, unfortunately.

My time in the United States (if all goes according to plan) is now measured in weeks, not months.

I won’t be sitting still for any of that time. I’m hoping for Snowy Owls and Florida Scrub-Jays, but who can say what the future holds.

Meanwhile, the British words keep ringing in my ears: “There are birds of paradise in Ukarumpa! I’ve seen four species on the ridge!”

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