"This guy's a yellow-rumped warbler," says Lindsay Lopez, rattling off a blue streak of breeds -- a white-breasted nuthatch, a ringneck pheasant, a cardinal.

She categorizes them just as quickly: game birds, desert birds, birds of prey.

When she's done, she looks up triumphantly.

Lindsay is a self-proclaimed bird expert.

Lindsay is 5 years old.

"Purple finch always misses school," she divulges, as a plush finch stares up, blankly, from a mound of stuffed animals on the living room floor. The northern spotted owl, she says, is his teacher.

Lindsay named over 50 in about 20 minutes.

But does that make her a pint-sized expert?

"I'm not sure there's a set standard for that," said Josh Southern, an editor with The Chat, a quarterly journal for the Carolina Bird Club. "The fun thing about birding is the amount you can learn is pretty much unlimited."

And Lindsay is off to a quick start, which is somewhat unusual. Most youngsters who get the bird bug usually get it from parents who are bird people, says Southern, who started birding 22 years ago, when he was 8. His father got him into it. That wasn't the case with Lindsay's mom Karen Lopez, a stay-at-home mom, and dad William Lopez, who works in the oil business.

"The first word she identified in a book was 'bird,' " Karen Lopez says with a shrug.

Lindsay was 2.

Then, at age 3, her grandmother gave her a stuffed quail from the Audubon collection. The birds have realistic plumage and make real-life calls. Then it was all birds, all the time for the toddler.

At Lindsay's urging, her mom signed her up for nature classes at Crowder Park in Apex and Hemlock Nature Preserve in Cary.

Lindsay fed her hunger for bird books at the local library. She bartered chores such as closing the blinds at night and putting away silverware for more Audubon birds.

"Her knowledge exploded," Karen Lopez said. "She can tell you the difference between a mountain bluebird and an eastern bluebird, or a downy woodpecker, pileated woodpecker and red-bellied woodpecker."

To gauge Lindsay's actual bird knowledge, Southern suggested asking her what our state bird is.

"Cardinal," Lindsay answered immediately.

How about the biggest bird?

"Peacock?"

Her mom urges her to think it through.

"Oh, ostrich."

Smallest bird?

"Hummingbird!" she says, grabbing a book and flipping right to a page where a tiny hummingbird sits on the eraser head of a pencil.

Southern said it's nearly impossible for any one person to be able to identify the approximate 7,500 different species of birds in the world. Most confine their birding to their neck of the woods, making "life lists" that number all the different kinds they've seen through binoculars, with their very own eyes. Southern estimates he has about 800 on his list.

Lindsay just sticks to her backyard for now, where her dad set up a bird feeder. And any local bird sanctuaries, parks or nature walks she can talk her mom into taking her.

Karen said Lindsay has expressed interest in becoming an ornithologist, a bird scientist in a branch of zoology that focuses on birds, when she grows up. But Karen is trying to let her interest take its natural course.

"Lately, she's been playing with Barbies a lot," she said.

But Barbies may not replace the bird obsession anytime soon.

Before Lindsay puts her feathery menagerie away, she looks up, offering a challenge: "See if you can name all these birds."