Birders often like to keep lists. A popular list is your “life list”, which is a list of birds that you’ve seen over the course of your life. When you add a new bird to that list, it’s called a “lifer.”

There’s a tradition that some birders follow when they add a lifer to their list. You celebrate with a Lifer Pie. For a fun story and the history behind this tradition, check out Audubon’s article, “Birding Is its Own Reward, but ‘Lifer Pie’ Makes it Even Sweeter.”

My sister likes to celebrate with an alternative sweet reward: a Bird Day Cake (as opposed to a birthday cake – get it?). As someone not particularly fond of pies, I prefer this mode of sugar indulgence much better.

Now opposite of getting a new life bird, there’s this thing called “dipping.” Say there is a bird that someone else has reported. If you go out looking for it but end the day missing your target bird, that’s called dipping.

I’ve dipped a ton this year. There were a lot of rare birds reported throughout the county that were required viewing in order to remain competitive for the Big Year. Despite multiple attempts to nab said bird, our efforts were for naught on countless occasions.

Take for example a recent adventure to find a Franklin’s Gull that popped by for a brief visit to a sewage pond. Upon hearing the report, a mass migration of local birders landed on this spot. I was running errands in another county when the WhatsApp chat exploded with updates. My husband and I raced home to grab our gear and rushed off to the ponds. Upon arrival, we walked as quickly as we could to the group who “had the Franklin’s Gull in their scope.” I took a quick look – no gull. Where was the gull? “It was just here, where did it go?” Gone.

We stayed for an hour-and-a-half, long after all the other birders left, looking for the gull and it never returned. As we set to leave, another birder came by and we wished him luck. Apparently our words are magical because as we pulled out of the lot, my phone blasted a text from the birder saying he got the gull. We rushed back to find him. “I had him in my binoculars a moment ago, but now I don’t see him!” The light was quickly fading and the gulls were leaving. No Franklin Gull for us. That is a great example of dipping. (The next day we returned and did find the Franklin Gull, so it was only a momentary setback).

Returning to the topic of Lifer Pie, my sister came up with a brilliant food-related idea to cheer up an otherwise sad ending: celebrate a dipping event with dips! Artichoke dip, hummus, dipping sauces accompanying fried foods, tzatziki, anything you like.

It’s probably best to find a dip that is on the healthier side because there’s a lot of dipping that happens with birding, although that just makes the successes that much sweeter – figuratively and literally with Lifer Pie!