Footnote 1: The official California list would pass the official Texas list in 2005, but the difference still remained very small (628 to 627).

The following is a reasonably accurate re-creation of the ranked California list totals by the State's top birders as of the date cited in each table. There was no known compilation prior to that published in the first volume of Birding magazine in 1969; it is probable that some active observers did not submit lists initially in early1969, so I use the most complete report in Dec 1969 (using Oct 1969 lists) as the starting point. It appears that all active observers submitted State list totals to the ABA from about Oct 1969 through1978. In the mid-1970s, however, many California listers chose to use a NIB approach to listing (="no introduced species" included), and this difference in approach dramatically affected the "rankings" shown in Birding listing supplements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Thus those publications cannot be trusted unless you happen to know who did and who did not use the NIB approach. I happen to know all that stuff.

Starting about 1976, I conducted personal surveys of all top California listers to record their totals, and regularly compiled those statistics. This was most extensive in the late 1970s but I have occasional updated surveys through March 1988. I have relied heavily on these compilations in this presentation. Beginning about 1980, some top State birders stopped submitting lists to the ABA for various reasons. Some were in protest of certain ABA decisions, and for others, it was thought unseemly for bird tour leaders to submit personal listing totals. It was been impossible to determine the actual numbers or rank of California birders from published ABA sources since the early 1980s. However, my personal surveys during the '80s permit this reasonably accurate re-creation through March 1988. I have not conducted these types of surveys since then.