365 True Things: 39/Bucket

I do not have a bucket list per se.

There are places I'd like to go, things I'd like to do, but they mostly simmer as possibilities in my mind. Nothing so formal as a list.

The other month on Facebook, though, I jokingly started collecting a "bucket of birds." It began with kingfishers—the goal being to see as many kingfisher species as possible (there are ninety, distributed widely—such as the above white-breasted kingfisher, Halcyon smyrmensis, common in Southeast Asia). And . . . the list keeps expanding, largely thanks to Frans de Waal, who posts gorgeous photos of all sorts of living creatures (like the wacky beetle with the Romulan ears). If I see an amazing bird, into the bucket it goes! I recently added the whiskered treeswift (Hemiproche comata), below, who looks like a Renaissance papal guard. And how could anyone resist the Malay barred eagle owl (Bubo sumatranus) or Taiwan's national bird, the blue-tailed mountain lady (a.k.a. Taiwan blue magpie, Urocissa caerulea)?

All the above birds live in Southeast or East Asia, and I think it would be a blast to arrange a dedicated bird-watching trip to, say, Vietnam or Thailand. I have been on one such trip in the past, to Ecuador, and even if I wasn't as bird-crazy as many of my co-travelers, I greatly enjoyed the ritual of early risings and stealthy hikes, ears and binoculars poised, followed by the evening list-ticking.

This morning Frans de Waal published a photo of an old friend, and reminded me that I have in fact had a bucket list—of one—for quite some time now. If I never get to Asia to see fancy owls and magpies, I would dearly love, just once, to see the hoopoe (Upupa epops—even its Latin name is fun!) in the wild. This crazy bird first captured my imagination when I saw it painted on a cabinet door in the Vatican library. I have since learned that it is the king of birds in Aristophanes' comedy The Birds; the national bird of Israel, having beaten out the white-spectacled bulbul in a 2008 poll; and the mascot of sports at the University of Johannesburg. And yes: both Israel and South Africa would be on my bucket list, if I had one—so there's that.

(Photos: White-breasted kingfisher by Graeme Guy; Cicadae parasite beetle by Nicky Day; Whiskered treeswift unattributed; Malay eagle owl by Shunda Lee; Malay blue magpies unattributed; Botbotik [hoopoe] by Dûrvan Cîrano)