You know you’re a birder when you start keeping a life list–a tab of all the species you’ve seen. I don’t care what your total is–it could be in the hundreds or it could be only a few of the most common species –if you’re tracking what you’ve seen, you’ve moved out of the world of casual bird admirers and into the land of the bird obsessed.

My own list tallies only into the 90s–depending on how you’re counting, the total number of bird species in the US rests somewhere in the low 1000s–so I’m a mere enthusiast by most standards. I don’t get up in the wee hours to go bird watching at dawn and except for a trip to Indiana to watch Sandhill Cranes, I don’t travel specifically to see birds. I limit my birding to what fits my lifestyle, which involves work, for one thing, and sleeping in whenever possible.

But it’s the list. The damn list.

On the one hand it reminds me that although I’ve seen a few wonderful birds, there’s still so much to see. That’s delightfully affirming to my mind.

On the other hand, there’s something about the tally that doesn’t sit right. It’s tangled up with collecting, which is tangled up with possession and maybe even ownership.

Like the other day. My husband and I were hiking on the Des Plaines River Trail and he stopped to observe a chipmunk. A chipmunk! Like there aren’t a gazillion of them all along the trail. And they’re all alike. But I digress. He stopped to see it, and I happened to notice a bird just a few feet above it, hidden in the brush. It was stately with a yellow beak that hooked downwards ever so slightly. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I’d never seen one before.

When we got home, I consulted my books. It was a yellow-billed cuckoo, a bird so unlikely in my area that I didn’t even know it was possible to see one. I was elated! Imagine that, a real cuckoo. And it was just sitting there–and by pure chipmunky chance–I saw it.

Of course, you know what happened next: I had to add it to my life list. And then I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about how special I was. I even let myself think that I had some kind of relationship to the yellow-billed cuckoo. Maybe I even thought a little that it was my bird.

And therein lies the danger of the list. Because I’ve seen it, I somehow possess it.

What, then, is the real point of birding? If you don’t want to make it about collecting, which is really about owning, then maybe you shouldn’t keep a life list.

But it’s crazy not to keep a list. People keep lists about all sorts of things. All the countries they’ve visited. All the wine they’ve drunk. All the books they’ve read. All the movies they think are overrated. The names of people who send holiday cards. The names of people who don’t. The number of mattress shops they pass on their way to work. I could go on and on. People list. It’s what we do.

Is it really all about possession and ownership? I’d like to hope that people aren’t that base. I’d like to think there’s something else going on. A friend of mine reminded me that lists can help you evaluate your life. Did I spend my time on the right things? Did I do what I said I was going to do? They are also great equalizers. The cuckoo takes up one row, just like the house sparrow. Just like the starling, it gets one check mark next to its name. We mark it. We move on. (Okay, after some gloating, we move on.)

Life lists are also a way of keeping a simple diary, of noting along the journey of life all the things we’ve done. I mean, you might forget and the list will help you remember. I’d like to say that’s what my bird list is about. At the end of it all, I’d like to be able to say I’ve gone a few places, met a few people, passed a few mattress stores and seen a few birds.

And the yellow-billed cuckoo–she was beaut, that bird–and she was one of them.