Question:
What is a nemesis species?
Answer:
A nemesis species is a species that a birder has difficulty seeing for no apparent reason. Somehow the species always seems to allude the grasp of said birder despite that birder's best efforts. There are no specific criteria universally used to define what is and isn't a nemesis species. Some birders, like my former ornithology professor, tend to be rigid with the term and apply it only rarely and to species that really put up a fight. He called Gyrfalcon his nemesis and made a comment to me one time about missing the bird on three different continents.
Other birders use the term more loosely to refer to the bird that is most problematic in a particular season only or a bird that while sometimes seen by the birder, still seems to show up less often than for other birders.
Team Fly or Die says:
Over the years we at Fly or Die have developed our own criteria for what a nemesis species is.
1) The species in question must be a would-be life bird (or possibly a would-be state bird).
2) The birder must have chased (and missed) a known individual of this species at least three times. This does not mean just birding a place where the bird is likely, but actually looking for a bird that has been reported.
3) The case for 'nemesis' status is strengthened by increased duration and frequency of these failed chases, by the distanced traveled to chase, and by the overall time the birder has been looking for this species.
4) You can have more than one nemesis at a time, but only if the case is very strong for all of them.
Here are two examples. First take the case of Yellow-breasted Chat. Before I had seen my first chat I had looked many time for them without ever seeing one. I had not, however, gone looking for many known individuals. I had not spent much time in the appropriate habitat. I had not traveled for the bird. I had simply kept my eyes open and never seen one. This was not a nemesis despite being a bird I should have seen long before I did.
Next consider my history with Sandhill Crane. I had looked for known individuals at Cape May and Oil City Road once each and the birds in Somerset County four times over two years. Other birders saw these individuals within hours of my searches. I drove hours looking for this bird. One showed up at the Celery Farm, just minutes from my home at the time, but departed before I was able to chase. To add insult to the entire situation, a solo bird landed on the baseball field of my former high school after I graduated and hung out for the afternoon. My sister saw the bird without trying or ever knowing what she was looking at, not still no cranes for me. It was as if the bird was taunting me. Almost four years of chasing finally ended this past January. The fifth time was the charm with the Somerset birds. This was a true nemesis.
PS. I decided I'd write the first entry in a series I will be calling 'Birding 101' today as I am not doing any birding this afternoon. Why start with nemesis species? Why not 'What is birding?' or 'How to ID a bird?' This simple answer is that I have a link on the sidebar right now pointing to an entry on a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher chase that is meant to define nemesis species. While the entry does define nemesis, it also has a lot of other info and the webmaster in me wanted to correct this with better web design, and so here we are.
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