I’m planning on taking part in the ABA’s Young Birder of the Year program, and a huge part of that is keeping a field journal. I don’t keep a birding journal besides my Sibley’s checklist, so I am a little lost at what to look for.
If any of y’all keep a journal I would love to hear what you use and how you like using it! If it at all helps, the only thing I don’t want in a journal is waterproof pages (I find them very prone to ink smudging).
Do you mean the Sibley Birder’s Life List and Field Diary? I’ve heard it includes a structured life list companion alongside open diary pages where you can do other work. I know some birders who recommended it to me, but I prefer others.
My setup is a Rite in the Rain notebook, not because of rain necessarily, but because of the sturdiness; I know I can stick it into my pocket or in my bag and never have problems. I use the Paper Mate Sharpwriter Mechanical Pencils because they are great for sketching and never smudge. If you don’t want to use the Rite in the Rain, here are some other options:
Leuchtturm1917 Medium (A5) Hardcover, features a built-in table of contents (index) and numbered pages. This would be a lifesaver for the ABA program because you can index specific species or behavioral encounters for the judges to reference.
Moleskine Classic Expanded (Dot Grid or Blank), birders I’ve seen always use this if they aren’t using Rite in the Rain. Dot grid helps balance lines for notes, but works for sketching.
You could record field notes on your phone and then put them in a file later for printing. Either use a voice recording app and transcribe the notes later, or use the voice-entry option for something like Google Workspace to record things and then correct/edit things later. You could then combine your notes and any photos you might take into one document.
I used to do this voice-entry with a Google Workspace file when I saw a lot of bird species in the field and didn’t want to take my eyes off the birds for too long to use/tap-tap-tap the eBird app. I would then summarize my notes putting them into eBird when I got back to my car.
I know you specifically asked about a paper journal, and I think it might be part of the Young Birder of the Year requirements for the art section?
But I want to expand on Ken’s point that:
I frequently send voice memos to myself and others. It can be tedious to type them up, but automated transcription is getting better on all platforms, all the time: WhatsApp, iPhone, etc. It might only catch 80% to 90% of the words, but even that requires a lot less editing than going word by word.
I hadn’t thought of using voice notes! That actually would help a lot as I tend to forget some of what I see. The only complication with voice notes is that I won’t be able to make them while I have Merlin Bird ID running.
Your voice will be recorded in Merlin. You’ll just have to do some editing if you want to save a bird song separately. But, I think recording your voice notes separately in a different app would be better.
As a side note, here are some tips for your Merlin recordings. They may help you clean up your audio notes, too, if for some reason you can’t make out what you said.
I use Audacity on my Merlin recordings. They come out very quiet. I often want to upload them to an eBird checklist or to iNaturalist, so they need some help.
The basics of Audacity are relatively easy to learn. This is the best quick guide I have found for increasing the overall volume, deleting unwanted sections and using Audacity’s auto background noise reduction function. There are more tweaks you can do, but these can vastly improve a recording. And, if you have multiple birds on one recording, you can easily copy the file and edit out the things you don’t want so the recording can be specific for a single bird.
Thank you @cs16-levi for the help! I went with the book from Leuchtturm1917! I’ve already gone out today to start recording my observations, and it works great!
Also thank you everyone else for the suggestions!
Awesome! If I’m recording what I saw in the field separately, I’ll use a scratch pad to write down quick notes, then when I get home, I methodically transfer them neatly into a separate, nicer notebook. You could consider using voice recording, as others said, or what I mentioned in the field as recommended, then transfer once home, as I’m sure the judges would prefer elaborate and neat notes. Just an idea; hope that helps.
