The More Lifers You See, The Fewer You Find

“We need Beauty to endure the unendurable.”
– James Janko

The More Lifers You See, The Fewer You Find
Baja California Sur, Mexico
March 2026

Puttering around our hotel room on our first morning in San José del Cabo, I heard loud squawking coming from our tiny balcony. Three cactus wrens were perched on the chair outside, investigating the towel I had left there to dry.

These wrens seem to be favorites among photographers, partly because of their boisterous personalities, but especially because of their beautifully patterned, speckled plumage. They were lifers for me and high on my list of hoped-for sightings. I didn’t get a photo then, but I managed to capture several later in the trip.

Soon after, I caught a flash of blue—a male blue grosbeak appeared, another lifer.

All but one of the lifers on my list here can also be found in the southwestern United States. Only the gray thrasher is endemic to Baja. We spent the first half of our trip on the Pacific side and the second half along the Gulf of California—different habitats, different birds. Many of the Pacific species range far up the coast, even to where I now live near the Oregon border.

That first day in San José del Cabo, I picked up a free newspaper, The Gringo Gazette (yes, really). The headline read: “Extremely Rare Duck Visits San José Estuary.” The bird in question was a Garganey, which typically winters in Africa and the Indomalayan region.

Birders traveled from across Mexico and the U.S. to see it and add it to their life lists. (I did not see it.) They didn’t come because the bird was especially striking or obviously out of place. It was a female duck, and from my perspective, it looked much like other female ducks—imagine a female mallard. That’s the garganey: modestly mottled brown, subtle and understated.

Am I making fun of life-listers? Well…yes, a little. I admit there’s real pleasure in encountering a new species. But when the main focus of birding becomes adding names to a list, something essential can get lost. The small dopamine hit of “one more tick” pales in comparison to the deeper, more transformative experience of connecting with wildness and beauty.

There’s an old myth about the Wild Twin. It says that each of us has a twin who was cast out at birth—this other self remains wild, free, and fully at home in the natural world. Perhaps birding, at its best, is a way of remembering—and welcoming back—that exiled twin.

I’ve included one bird here that isn’t technically a lifer. I first saw it two years ago in Nevada, but it’s such a striking bird that I couldn’t resist sharing it again: the phainopepla. (Go ahead, try pronouncing it.) I also saw a pyrrhuloxia—an even greater tongue-twister.

These names remind me of the invented drug names in TV ads—perhaps something for Crohn’s disease or eczema. There’s a man on social media who creates science-fiction stories using drug names as characters. Skyrizi, for example, could be the ruler of an ancient underground civilization on Alpha Centauri (or a treatment for plaque psoriasis)!

In the end, the true richness of birding isn’t counted in lifers, but in moments—brief encounters of color, movement, and aliveness that draw us out of ourselves and into the living world. The list may grow, but what matters more is the quiet, steady unfolding of attention, and the simple joy of being there to witness it.

Leave a comment so I know you were here.

Birds images below:
Cactus wren
Blue grosbeak
Phainopepla
Pyrrhuloxia
Gilded flicker
Gray thrasher
Common ground dove
Ash-throated flycatcher
Hooded oriole
Scott’s oriole
Verdin
Laughing Gull

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