Unless you’ve been living in a snowbank (which we realize is entirely possible), you probably know that this week is the biggest one for Maine high school basketball.

As we’ve been watching some of the games (including the Boothbay boys’ tough loss in the quarterfinals), we couldn’t help but notice similarities between birding and basketball.

Wings: In basketball, “wings” are the outside players who bring the ball up, run plays, and are usually good outside shots. In short, they move the game forward — the same function as the wings of a bird.

The “Bigs”: In basketball, “bigs” are the large players who play power positions — Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, Shaquille O’Neal. You’ve got your birding “bigs” too, who can power your birding — David Sibley with his ID guides, for example, and Kenn Kaufman, whose “Kingbird Highway” (about his year-long, famously low-budget cross-country birding adventures) made him a rock star among birders.

Bird: As in “Larry Bird,” who, as Boston Celtics fans know, is arguably the best basketball player ever. For us birders, it’s all in the name.

Foul/Fowl: In basketball, you count each foul. In birding, you count each fowl.

Fitness: Both basketball and birding require you to be ready to play. For basketball, you’ve got long hauls up and down the court during the game. At the same time, don’t underestimate the role of the fast break. Likewise, birding requires “long hauls” to see species that occur only in specific places — the three-toed woodpeckers in Maine’s North Woods, for example. As for fast breaks, nothing gets a birder out of the office or off the couch faster than a report of, say, a swallow-tailed kite on Monhegan Island.

Skill: You’ve gotta have the moves. In basketball, lay-ups, three-pointers, foul shots, give-and-go, pick-and-rolls — these are a few of the essentials. Meanwhile, birders’ have to master the ability to distinguish those pesky Empidonax flycatchers from one another, and be able to answer questions like, “Would you say the head shape of that distant duck silhouette is more peaked, like a lesser scaup, or flatter, like a greater?”

Statistics: B-ball players track field goals, free throws, three-pointers, steals, assists, the list goes on and on. In the birding world, you’ve got your life list (total number of bird different species seen in your life so far), year list, yard list, and so on. We make stats-laden posts to the Maine birding listserve like, “Had a 13-warbler day at Ovens Mouth Preserve” and “Saw all the swallows, all the vireos and three common owls.” A stat like that is birding’s answer to basketball’s triple-double.

Competition: In Maine high school basketball, it all comes down to the week of February break. Well, birding has its own championship — the World Series of Birding. This birding contest requires small teams of birders to traverse the state of New Jersey (where the WSB originated) identifying as many bird species as possible in the same 24-hours. Anyone who’s done a birding Big Day has earned bragging rights in the field of competitive birding, too, and since it was likely a fundraiser, you can call it a slam dunk.

Despite the similarities between basketball and birding, we must note one key difference: You can watch NBA on big-time sports networks, and can see the high school games on MPBN or tune to the major news channels for highlights. Not so for birding. Maybe some day.

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the book, “Maine’s Favorite Birds.”