The Nature Journal

It’s fun to keep records of what you see. This will help you remember birds, and it’s fun to look back and see what you saw in the past. Describe birds you want to remember or sketch what you saw. Details are important; these can include:

  • Date, time, and weather
  • Relative size (bigger than a robin, smaller than a chickadee)
  • Field mark that led you to identify the bird
  • Habitat  (e.g. backyard, pond, marsh)
  • What it was doing (e.g. feeding, flying back and forth from perch, bobbing its tail, chasing another bird out of its territory)
  • What it was feeding on
  • Male, female, pair, in a group?
  • Anything else in the environment of note

The journal should be your creation. Carry a notebook out in the field, journal in a diary at home, or create a blog. The important thing is taking time to reflect on what you have observed. Whenever you see something now, recording your experience in some way will make it much easier to remember what you learned.

Here are some links below to help you get started:

How to Keep a Nature Journal

Video – Nature Connection through Deliberate Attention and Curiosity

Sierra Club Nature Journal