Are You a 'Lister' ?

It a long time since I bothered keeping a written list of birds for specific sites or even a grand total. In fact on the occasions when other birders ask me how many species of birds I've seen, I usually make some noncomittal answer or give some vague number. The question is usually asked by someone who's seen far more than I have, keeps impeccable lists and is often the prelude to telling me just how many species they've seen. It's a wonder that I don't keep lists. In my youth, not telling you how lomg ago that was, I kept lists of many things. I stood on the street corner collecting tram and trolleybus numbers. I have a 1954 copy of "The Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe" bought for me at that time by my parents. It's rather dilapidated, but contains lists and totals of my early birding. I seem to recall that this was the first British field guide and was possibly the catalyst for the surge of interest in birding in the UK. It was a big leap up from my Observer's Book of British Birds that I had previously relied on.
These days I rely on my memory to list birds, something that with age, is becoming somewhat less reliable. You may well be wondering what this all has to do with the images of a Black Currawong. Well, if my memory is correct, this is the first one that I've recorded in the South Arm area, at Goat Bluff to be precise. I spent a couple of hours walking around the bluff this morning, recording 38 species, boosted by a few seabirds and waders. Most of the area is coastal heath and two of the commoner shrubs, Banksia marginata and Correa alba, are both in flower and attracting many birds. I spent some time waiting at one banksia as I attempted to photograph a succesion of visitors. They included, Crescent Honeyeaters, almost exclusively female, New Holland and Yellow-throated Honeyeaters, Eastern Spinebill, flocks of Silvereye and Brown Thornbills. Small flocks of Yellow-tailed Cockatoos passed nearby and last but not least, the lone Black Currawong pictured. I photographed it as it passed up and down the bluff and I got the impression it was lost. Whether that was really so, or why I thought that, I'm really not sure. There are Grey Currawongs in the area, especially so in the woodland above the bluff, but I've only rarely seen them in the coastal heath and nearly always during the Winter months. Perhaps I really should start committing my lists to paper.