So many sightings, so few species

I'm almost finished reading "To See Every Bird On Earth", a story about birding, and a birder who has seen over 7000 species.  I also re-read "Birding:  Tales Of A Tribe".  Interesting to compare the two, the former is written by a non-birder who has been on many birding trips, and the second by a very keen birder. 

I don't see myself wanting to see that many birds...  I like birds, and taking bird trips, but that's extreme.  Whoa. 

It did make me curious for one thing - I wanted to have a chronological life list.  I want to be able to say what my 100th bird was.  I had a life checklist, but wasn't sure where it was.  Found most of my bird books and entered all the info I could find into a database.  Ended up with 2605 records.  For a piddly life list of 183.  Figured it would be at least 200.  Sigh.  I could increase it without birding if I could get some of my bad blurry photos recognized - my pics aren't good enough to say which peeps I've seen, so I didn't count any.  But that won't make it 200. 

It ends up being especially bad considering that my yard list is 75! 

Oh well, more excuse to go birding!