How to Build a Bird Photography Life List (Free Checklist Template with 700+ Species)

Many birders keep a life list of species they’ve seen. As photographers, though, our goal is different. Seeing a bird and successfully photographing it are two very different accomplishments. One might happen in seconds with binoculars; the other often requires planning, travel, patience, and the right conditions.

Over time, I began keeping a personal life list based only on birds I had successfully photographed. What started as a simple tracking exercise gradually became one of the most motivating long-term projects in my wildlife photography.

In this article, I’ll explain how to create your own bird photography life list, why it can shape the way you travel and shoot, and provide a sample template with over 700 bird species that you can use to start tracking your own photographed species.

Why I Started a Photography Life List

The idea grew naturally from travel and wildlife trips. After returning from places like Texas, Florida wetlands, Arizona, and international destinations, I realized I was accumulating a wide variety of species across very different environments. But I had no structured way to track that progress or reflect on what I’d actually achieved photographically.

One important realization is that you don’t have to start from zero. When I began building my list, I went back through my Lightroom catalog and identified birds I had already successfully photographed on past trips. If you use another cataloging system, you can do the same thing there. This lets you quickly populate your life list with prior work and turns it into a true record of your photographic history, not just what you capture going forward.

I’ve also learned to always bring a capable bird photography lens with me whenever I head out to shoot — even if my primary goal is macro or landscape photography. Unexpected encounters with birds happen more than you’d think, and having the right reach with me has allowed me to add many species to my life list that I otherwise would have missed.

A bird photography life list gave me:

• A long-term goal beyond individual trips
• A way to measure real photographic progress
• Motivation to keep exploring new habitats and locations

Unlike a standard species checklist, this list represents moments where everything aligned to capture a recognizable photograph of the bird. Each entry is not just a sighting — it’s a photographic success

What Counts: Setting Personal Rules

One of the most important steps is deciding what qualifies for your list. The rules don’t have to match anyone else’s; they just need to be consistent.

For my own list, I follow a simple guideline:

• The bird must be clearly identifiable in a photograph I captured. I use the Merlin and iBird Plus apps to assist with identification
• The image doesn’t need to be portfolio-worthy, but it must be intentional and usable
• Flyovers or distant record shots only count if identification is certain

These rules keep the list meaningful without turning it into a perfection contest. The goal is progress, not exclusivity.

How It Changed My Travel Planning

Once I began tracking photographed species, I noticed my travel photography started to shift. Trips became less about “what if I get lucky” and more about “what species are possible here.”  I use the eBird website to research the locations that I’m going for the possible species that I can photograph.

Instead of randomly exploring, I now research:

• Specific locations for different bird species
• Habitat types at each location
• Likely species based on time of year

This doesn’t remove spontaneity — it simply gives direction. A sunrise walk in a marsh or an afternoon in desert scrub suddenly feels more purposeful when you know what species might realistically appear.

Over time, the list becomes a map of where your photography has taken you and where it might go next.

Gear and Technique Lessons from Different Species

Tracking only the birds you’ve successfully photographed quickly reveals how diverse bird photography really is. Photographing a warbler deep in tangled brush is nothing like capturing a raptor in flight or a shorebird feeding along the shoreline. Each species you add to your life list represents a different technical challenge you had to solve in the field.

Instead of teaching broad theory, the list becomes a practical record of what it actually took to make the image — the focal length that gave enough reach, the autofocus approach that worked (or didn’t), the light you needed, and how close you were able to get. Over time, patterns emerge based on real shooting experience rather than assumptions.

In my own workflow, I also tag each bird species in my Adobe Lightroom Classic catalog so I can quickly filter by species and review the focal lengths, settings, and locations used. You could take this a step further and add similar notes directly to your life list if that fits your workflow better, turning it into not just a checklist of species photographed, but a running record of how you actually captured each one.

Across dozens or hundreds of photographed species, these experiences accumulate into a realistic understanding of what your bird photography truly requires — far more than any single trip or location could teach on its own.

How to Start Your Own Bird Photography Life List

Starting your own list is simple and doesn’t require any special software. A basic spreadsheet is more than enough.

Begin with just 5 columns:

• Bird Species
• Bird Family / Category
• Photographed?  Used for a count field to know how many species you have photographed.  This also allows you to keep birds that you haven’t photographed in your life list at potential future targets. 
• Date Photographed
• Location

Note: If you have a Date Photographed for every bird, you could also use it as your count field.

From there, you can expand with optional fields like notes, behavior, camera, lens, etc.

To make this easier, I’ve created a simple template with over 700 bird species that you can download and customize for your own bird photography life list. You can adapt it to match your workflow, whether you prefer detailed tracking or a minimalist checklist approach.

Conclusion — A Long-Term Project That Evolves With You

A bird photography life list is not about competing with other photographers or reaching a specific number. It’s about giving long-term structure to your wildlife work and recognizing the cumulative progress that happens across years of trips, practice, and field experience.

Looking back through my own list, I don’t just see species names — I see memories of early mornings, walks in the woods, and overseas travels. It’s a quiet but powerful reminder that wildlife photography is not built on single images, but on a lifetime of encounters.

And that makes every new species photographed feel like both an accomplishment and an invitation to keep exploring.

Written by Martin Belan

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