birds in the area you live in

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I have been a birder, more or less, in the San Francisco Bay Area for many decades. Consequently, I have seen just about all of the regularly-seen birds plus some vagrant stragglers. However, I have not photographed them all, by any means.
 
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I’m not a birder, but sometimes enjoy photographing them. I use the Merlin Bird ID app on my phone to help identify what I see and to look to see what I might have an opportunity to see. Overall, I’d say the percentage of local birds I’ve seen might be around 30% or even less.
 
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I counted around 30 birds that I can easily identify. Our birds (in Southwest British Columbia, Canada) tend to have relatively muted, earthy colours compared to birds with splashy colors that can be found in places like Costa Rica. I still like to take photos of them whenever I can.
 
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Ibrahim said:
I don't know much about birds. Just like seeing them and photographing them. Birds in my local area are given in this

Native birds of Toowoomba local government area (Department of Environment, Science and Innovation)

wetlandinfo.des.qld.gov.au wetlandinfo.des.qld.gov.au

I might have seen about 30% of what are on the list. Then again I don't get out much.

How many of your local birds have you seen?
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I’ve photographed about 50 species in or above our partially wooded half acre suburban lot in central North Carolina, and seen or heard about ten more.

Have lived here long enough to improve the habitat through planting bird friendly plants and encouraging nesting. I shoot almost everyday in what has evolved into a backyard bird studio. Below is a recent photo of a Carolina wren with a bit of nesting material. Shot with Nikon Z9 and 800mm PF and post-processed with Topaz Denoise.
 
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Being a wildlife and nature photographer (flowers, insects, landscapes, reptiles, etc) we do see a lot of birds but I’m not a birder. I live in the midwestern USA and have seen most of the common ones. However, we are in a boundary area and we get a lot of migrants and, especially in winter, we get cataracts from other areas that fly in on the winter storms. I’ve probably seen less than 50% of the “possibles” here and about 70-80% of the regular residents. I know people who only have a few birds left to fulfill their life list of everything possible around here. It takes dedication and usually a lot of research and traveling around the area. I have one friend that doesn’t think twice about driving 500 miles to see some rare bird i our area. I’m not that dedicated to go looking for a rare bird.
Jeff
 
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Thanks for all the replies.
I've been taking notice of birds in the area for about 5 years. Some things I have noticed:
1. birds tend to have territories, moving a couple of hundred metres is far enough to find regular birds that don't visit.
2. small changes to properties can have a big effect on bird life. Next door was rented and the people let the grass grow. New people moved in and cleaned it up. Lost the whip birds and satin bower birds.
3. Nos. 1 daughter and husband decided they needed a garage. This meant taking out an old mulberry tree. This happened about the same time a large fig tree fell down in a storm. Resulted in loss of several species.
4. Maybe because of 2. and 3. noisy miners moved in in large numbers. They chase away the little birds.
 
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I've never gone through the exercise of figuring out how many of the birds native to my area I've covered. But apart from a few rarities, I think it'll probably be most of them. Never get enough of them though (always a better shot to be gotten :) ).
 
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There's a gentleman who is a local birder that keeps track of everything seen at the local National Wildlife Refuge. This is the list of birds seen in the last 10 days, out of the 170 a quick count says I've seen 130 of them before (~75%).

Recent Bird Sightings from Plum Island

www.bartonstreet.com

My wife and I use an app when in the field to document what birds we see so we know when we see something new. I obviously have not photographed them all and don't have a count for that. I always say I'm going to go through my LR collection and actually label them but then I look at how many photos I have and decide not to :)
 
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I live in Hawaii where we don't have the number of bird species other places have. We have the "city birds", imports like mynas, cardinals, bulbuls. We have a few water birds, ducks gallinules, coots and stilts primarily. Cattle egrets. Plovers that winter here but spend their summers in Alaska. And quite a few seabirds like frigatebirds, boobies, tropicbirds, etc. There are a small number of very endangered native birds high up in isolated parts of the mountains, but very rare and hard to find.

I envy people that live in areas with lots of different birds. 130 or 150 different species like some places have would be amazing. But I make do. Monday I drove my 4x4 3.5 miles down a very rough dirt road (permit and 4x4 required) to get to a protected bird area where Laysan albatross and shearwaters breed and nest. I have rheumatoid arthritis and can no longer hike the 7 miles round trip like I used to. I got some great shots of juvenile albatross, and one adult in flight (6' wingspan!). The shearwaters are gone this time of year, so that is all I saw that day except for a few mynas, which I can see in my yard every day. But I'm not complaining, I live in Hawaii. And the area I was in is beautiful.
 
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splatbass said:
I live in Hawaii where we don't have the number of bird species other places have. We have the "city birds", imports like mynas, cardinals, bulbuls. We have a few water birds, ducks gallinules, coots and stilts primarily. Cattle egrets. Plovers that winter here but spend their summers in Alaska. And quite a few seabirds like frigatebirds, boobies, tropicbirds, etc. There are a small number of very endangered native birds high up in isolated parts of the mountains, but very rare and hard to find.

I envy people that live in areas with lots of different birds. 130 or 150 different species like some places have would be amazing. But I make do. Monday I drove my 4x4 3.5 miles down a very rough dirt road (permit and 4x4 required) to get to a protected bird area where Laysan albatross and shearwaters breed and nest. I have rheumatoid arthritis and can no longer hike the 7 miles round trip like I used to. I got some great shots of juvenile albatross, and one adult in flight (6' wingspan!). The shearwaters are gone this time of year, so that is all I saw that day except for a few mynas, which I can see in my yard every day. But I'm not complaining, I live in Hawaii. And the area I was in is beautiful.
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I looked up birds in Hawaii. Seems that birds living on islands are more prone to extinction than those that don't.
 
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Ibrahim said:
I looked up birds in Hawaii. Seems that birds living on islands are more prone to extinction than those that don't.
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Before man came to these islands there were no predators. Then rats, cats and mongoose were introduced. This decimated the populations. They just weren't adapted for that having lived for millennia without them. A lot of non-native birds have been introduced too, which compete with them.
 
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splatbass said:
Before man came to these islands there were no predators. Then rats, cats and mongoose were introduced. This decimated the populations. They just weren't adapted for that having lived for millennia without them. A lot of non-native birds have been introduced too, which compete with them.
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Sounds like NZ.
 
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