Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

There are birders…and then there are birders.

15— Some birders can spend a lot of time and a lot of money and they’ll see maybe four thousand or five thousand birds in their lifetime. So, seeing eight thousand birds like these two people have, really requires very extensive amounts of travel where you’re going to every single corner of the globe.

The two people are David Shackelford and Phil Rostron. Writer, Russell Roe, penned an article about the men for the August/September issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine.

He says these men rank among the top ten “big listers” worldwide. They have each seen and listed more than 8-thousand bird species apiece.

08— There are about 10-thousand known species, and once you get up to those certain levels, it gets harder and harder to reach another level.

Reaching new levels is not just harder, it is also more expensive…

12—Phil Rostron says his cost per bird keeps going up Every trip he used to see maybe 200 new species on a trip, and now he’s lucky to see 20 new species on a trip. And he’s spending the same amount of money on the same type of trip.

More on big list birding tomorrow… Find this article in the August/September 2013 issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine.

Support provided by Ram Trucks. Doing what’s right and good regardless of the degree of difficulty — takes guts. Those are the people who build Ram trucks. RAM.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.