A page from the author’s life list.

January 1, 1960, was a good day for me in my nascent birding career. Though interested in birds since I was about five years old, now in my teens I had become thoroughly immersed in and committed to birding, never to look back. I got my cousin Bruce Carrick hooked on birds and we formed a birding partnership. On that New Year’s Day, Bruce and I were birding at Churchville Reservoir in nearby Bucks County, Pennsylvania. We looked out at the smallest of the reservoir’s three lakes and found a drake Northern Shoveler, our first, as well as three Buffleheads, also our first. Happy New Year to us, with two life bird species! We kind of went nuts with joy and actually cheered; this was well before high-fives were invented. And best of all we proudly, almost ceremoniously, added two more X marks to our growing life lists in our copies of A Field Guide to the Birds—in my opinion, the most influential book about birds thus far written.