Using a Notebook However You Want To
Okay, so this one's a little different than the others, because I'm not going to tell you exactly how to do it. That's kind of the point.
Everybody acts like real birders keep a life list. You know the kind, a running tally of every species you've ever spotted, dates and locations, maybe a rare-bird alert app pinging you at six in the morning about something over by the point of the mountain. And if that's your thing, great, genuinely. But I don't think you have to keep a list to be doing this right. I keep notebooks and mine are full of half birds and half people, and I count that as real birding. Enjoy it however you enjoy it. That's not me being soft on the subject, I mean it.
What I actually use
I keep a plain notebook, same kind I use for regular writing, nothing special. I've had the same one going since my first winter out at the lake, four years now, and I still have it. I go back through it sometimes.
Here's the thing though. Half the pages are birds and half are notes about who I ran into on the trail and what their grandkids are doing. There's an entry from my second winter that just says "rough-legged hawk, and Diane's granddaughter got into the U." Both of those mattered to me that morning. I didn't separate them out into a bird section and a life section, because out there they weren't separate. That's honestly become my favorite part of the notebook, going back and seeing who I was talking to the same week I finally figured out a harrier from a hawk.
How to start one, if you want to
Get any notebook. Doesn't need to be fancy, doesn't need to be waterproof, doesn't need a special birding layout with columns for species and GPS coordinates. A five dollar notebook from Macey's works fine. Mine's not even a nature-specific one, it's just a notebook.
Bring a pencil, not a pen, in the winter. Pens skip and freeze up in the cold more than people expect, and pencil just works. I learned that the hard way standing at the lake trying to get ink to flow at 24 degrees.
Write in it however feels natural. Some people want:
- Date, location, species, done. Clean and simple.
- A running story of the walk, birds mentioned in passing like they're characters.
- Sketches. I can't draw and I still do a little scribble sometimes, doesn't have to be good, it's for you.
- Weather notes. This matters more than people think, because what's out on the water changes a lot with wind and temperature, and if you write it down you start noticing patterns year to year.
There's no wrong version of this. I'd rather you write three words in a notebook you'll actually pick up again than build some elaborate system you abandon by February.
A caution, small one
If you're writing while you're walking, watch your footing. The trail out by the lake gets icy in patches even when it looks dry, especially in shaded spots, and looking down at a notebook while walking on ice is how people go down. Stop, write, then walk. Takes ten extra seconds and saves you a bruised hip.
Why I think this matters more than the list
Back when I was dancing, we used to keep notes too, but they were about who we'd rehearsed with and how a certain lift felt that day, not just steps in order. It wasn't really about tracking progress in a strict sense. It was about remembering the whole morning, not just the technical part.
That's what my bird notebook ended up being. If I'd only written down species names, I think I would've stopped caring about it by the second winter. It was the people, and the cold, and Alan saying something dry under his breath, that kept me coming back to the pages. The birds were the reason I started writing. They weren't the only reason I kept writing.
So if you want a clean list, make a clean list. If you want it messy like mine, let it be messy. Nobody's grading this. There's no ward party sign-up sheet for correct notebook format.
Before next time
Grab any notebook you've already got lying around the house, even a half-used one, and bring it to our next walk along with a pencil. You don't need to know what to write in it yet. You'll figure that out standing there.