Kansas County Listing Milestones

County listing, keeping track of all the species you've seen in a given county, has been going on for probably as long as there were two or more birders in an area. In Kansas, county listing became "formalized" in November of 1999 when Lisa Edwards issued her first call for county lists. The first list, on November 30, 1999, had a total of 85 county life list records. By March 2020 that number had jumped to a list of over 3,500 county life list records. I doubt that anyone foresaw this explosive growth in county listing. Lisa continued to compile the monthly updates through January 2010 when she handed the database over to Mark Land. In January 2018 Mark handed off the list keeping responsibilities to Kevin Groeneweg. The county life lists are published bimonthly on KSBIRD-L, the Kansas email bird list. Anyone can go back through and view the progression through the years in the KSBIRD-L archives.

Regularly, questions are asked about who has the "most". Since that can be defined in many ways, following are a series of tables. Where the  report of county listing is updated, bimonthly, this list will not be updated bimonthly. It will be updated once or twice a year as Chuck has time and or feels that enough changes have taken place to justify updating it. All of these tables are based on the database that Kevin keeps on the reported county list totals.


Listed in all 105 counties

150 species
in 105 counties
   
Birder

Year Milestone Reached

Total current county species
Henry Armknecht 2018 19,565
100 species
in 105 counties
   
Pete Janzen 2011 16,910
Kevin Groeneweg 2013 16,770
Jim Malcom 2016 16,424
75 species
in 105 counties
   
Matt Gearheart 2013 15,030
Jeff Calhoun

2022

14,475
Tom Ewert 2019 13,647
Glenn Caspers 2016 12,315
Dan Larson

2022

12,224
Sam Mannell 2016 11,463
Terry Mannell 2016 11,463

Listed in 75 or more counties.

75 species in 75 counties or more counties Total county species
Scott Seltman 104 13,600
Mike Rader 99 14,543
Kathy Carroll 92 10,594
Doris Burnett 78 8,862
Robert Penner 78 8,844
Nic Allen 76 8,886

The 300 Club - Birders who have seen 300 or more in an individual county.

County list total County Birder # on official county list Percent of total
349 Sedgwick Pete Janzen 385 90.65
331 Morton Sebastian Patti 381 86.88
323 Morton Mike Rader 381 84.78
318 Stafford Mike Rader 366 86.89
317 Douglas Galen Pittman 369 85.91
316 Morton Scott Seltman 381 82.94
315 Barton Robert Penner 382 82.46
314 Johnson Mark Land 346 90.75
313 Johnson Matt Gearheart 346 90.46
312 Russell Mike Rader 342 91.23
312 Riley Ted Cable 362 86.19
308 Geary Chuck Otte 333 92.49
308 Cowley Max Thompson 347 88.76
307 Sedgwick John Northrup 385 79.74
305 Cowley Gene Young 347 87.90
304 Neosho Andrew Burnett 306 99.35
303 Stafford Scott Seltman 366 82.79
303 Douglas Phil Wedge 369 82.11
301 Johnson Terry Swope 346 86.99
300 Douglas Kathy Carroll 369 81.30
300 Sedgwick Kevin Groeneweg 385 77.92

Top individual county lists based on percent of official list total, minimum of 90%.

Percent of total County Birder # on official county list Birder's county list total
99.35 Neosho Andrew Burnett 306 304
98.68 Pawnee Scott Seltman 303 299
95.05 Atchison Don Merz 283 269
93.80 Osborne Henry Armknecht 242 227
93.64 Atchison Al Schirmacher 283 265
93.27 Leavenworth John Schukman 297 277
92.49 Geary Chuck Otte 333 308
91.34 Rush Scott Seltman 277 253
91.23 Brown Don Merz 285 260
91.23 Russell Mike Rader 342 312
91.03 Sherman John Palmquist 290 264
90.97 Labette Chad Gardner 277 252
90.85 Sumner Gene Young 328 298
90.75 Johnson Mark Land 346 314
90.65 Sedgwick Pete Janzen 385 349
90.65 Ellsworth Mike Rader 310 281
90.57 Miami Malcolm Gold 318 288
90.55 Sumner Max Thompson 328 297
90.46 Johnson Matt Gearheart 346 313
90.24 Leavenworth Galen Pittman 297 268
90.15 Franklin Malcolm Gold 274 247

It should be pointed out that county listing is not for everyone. Many birders choose not to keep track of each and every bird that they see in every county or perhaps not at all. This is an individual choice that we support. For those who do enjoy keeping track of county records we encourage you to also consider utilizing the eBird online sightings program sponsored by The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. While a great deal of resources can be spent on county listing, there is also a great deal of value we have gained from these citizen scientists in the thousands of new county records that are collected. We have improved our knowledge of bird distribution in the state thanks to the hundreds of people who have submitted new sightings in pursuit of building their own county lists.

To achieve the kinds of numbers shown above requires a heavy commitment of time and money. The potential environmental impact, i.e. gasoline consumption, has been mentioned by many sources and should not be ignored. While competitive birding does have a certain appeal to some birders, there are other options: a big county list/year, a big yard list/year and there have even been "green" big years (BIGBY - Big Green Big Year) where birders only count birds that they've seen by walking or biking to birding destinations.  - Chuck Otte, KSBIRDS Webmaster

Updated January 2023

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