Note taking and recording, How do you take your notes? (1 Viewer)

Jane Turner said:

Bridled Tern is one - the other is a Great Knot!

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It's really obvious now you say it.

I keep a notebook with me at all times and jot down what I see and do really bad sketches that always just look like a duck/sparrow hybrid. Keeps me happy. Wish I had the disciplin to write it all up in a neat form.

A recent 'interesting' thread prompted me to search out this one again. The subject of taking notes (esp. descriptions) in the field was raised, and the suggestion made that hardly anyone does it these days. Why ever not?? Although I've never had the time or discipline required to write up 'neat' notes, I would be a poorer birder without my field notebooks. Although a few have bitten the dust somehow during a near ten year lay-off, most of my old notebooks are still in existence and allow me the occasional trip down memory lane. Size-wise, whatever fits in the pocket will do me.

Taking descriptions
If you are fortunate enough to find a good bird (everyone does, eventually) the major priority is to get good views, see as many features as poss, etc etc. As the panic recedes it may be possible to take notes as you watch the bird. If not, then IMMEDIATELY afterwards. A sketch too, even if rubbish. Notes taken AT THE TIME are invaluable when submitting a record, whether at county or national level. They are of enormous assistance to a Records Committee. Plus, they are great to reminisce over. This gives me the excuse to add the following attachment, showing a page from 'The Independant' newspaper, and a page from my notebook. Hopefully this illustrates a few points......
1. It can be possible to watch the bird AND take notes.
2. It's well worth taking descriptions of birds you twitch, not just those you find.
3. My dodgy artwork and the back of my neck once graced a huge number of breakfast tables.

For any Kent birders who may view the pic in the above post - that's Martin Coath sprawled comatose across the landscape. He was getting on a bit, pace a bit much......

I love the idea of hand-written notes and sketches etc. and used to try this when I was a kid. I think it's the kind of thing I'd love to look back on in later life.

I've only been back into birding for 2 months and am just learning my local patch. For now, I rarely see more than 25 species on one trip so I'm going mainly by mental notes of species, counts, sex, behaviour, etc. (I have quite a good memory) and then enter them into a database when I get home. I often take my video camera out with me and that serves as good record for some of the more ineteresting things I see.

The database is something I knocked up quickly in Access, which is okay for various lists (life, year, site, etc.), but I'm finding it quite restrictive (partly my own fault - as the designer!) and very sterile to use.

After entering in the database and checking over, I use BirdTrack to send everything to the county recorder. Since I average 4 trips a week in my local patch (literally on my doorstep), I seem to be building a good picture of the commoner birds that can be found there.

I've found the BirdTrack interface much nicer than that of my Access database, so now I'm working on something similar based on XML for my own personal use. Has anyone come across other XML-based systems for recording? I found one US-based one that could be used, but requires some modifications to fit my needs.

Details of the system can be found here: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/aba/doc/
Examples of the records can be found here: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/aba/field.html

For me, there's a classic trade-off between the beauty of hand-written notes and the precision/efficiency of electronic notes.

Crikey, you guys are good! I have enough trouble trying to remember what settings I have the camera on!

Cheers

Andy

midlandsbirder said:

I would be interested to know how other birders keep their notes, photos, list etc. I usualy take field notes in my small pocket book, then later at home re write them into a a4 ring binder including digiscoped pictures (if I got any that daY!! When I say re write, latlely I have typed them out on the pc. (See thumbnail pic.) How do birders get those lovely hand painted pics, in their note books when most birds fly off when they know you are watching them? Is there anyone I wonder, that don't keep any record? Just memories maybee What freedom!! I suppose I Keep mine thinking one day, all the volumes can be handed over to the local club after I have gone.

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I don't keep any notes simply because the thought of writing everything down seems like a total drag, and I go birding for the freedom as much as anything. The most I've ever done is write out a list of all the birds seen on a certain birding holiday etc, though I am also trying to use the British Birds version 8 DVD rom to record roughly when / where I saw certain things. For me its all about the buzz of the moment when you see something rare, special, beautiful or spectacular, not to mention going to really lovely places and meeting nice people (well, most of the time anyway!). I'm pretty much content just to store things as memories rather then keep records.

I take virtually all of my field notes using a a small dictaphone. The advantage is that it can be done without taking your eyes off the bird and you can take very detailed descriptions quickly. I also do a lot of behaviour observations and the dictaphone can be used to record things in real time (ie by recording when a bird entered and left a nest with food, etc). It can also be used to record loud or close bird songs (well enough to be able to check them up later), or I will whistle in my imitation of the call, to check later.
I always have a field notebook for sketches, which I only occasionally use. I also always carry my camera, in case I find something unusual that needs to be reported (a pretty common occurance when you are birding in an area that has few birders).
The negative side of using a dictaphone is that it then has to be copied up afterwards and that can take a lot of time. I always do this when I get back and for many locations I will also type it up onto an excel spreadsheet for later analysis.

Tom

If you want a cheap database and at the same time contribute to the British and Irish birding data then try the BTO/RSPB Birdtrack site. It allows you to record birds seen at any site you wish wish to specify. You can then use the database to look back at your own records and also have a look at data compiled from others. Its main use is to look at bird distribution, changes over time and migration. Gives a meaning to having your own patch that your regularly visit. An antidote to rarity chasing!

Flemingo said:

If you want a cheap database and at the same time contribute to the British and Irish birding data then try the BTO/RSPB Birdtrack site. It allows you to record birds seen at any site you wish wish to specify. You can then use the database to look back at your own records and also have a look at data compiled from others. Its main use is to look at bird distribution, changes over time and migration. Gives a meaning to having your own patch that your regularly visit. An antidote to rarity chasing!

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I 've used A4 blank notebooks for a while now, copying up notes from my field notebook. I add additional notes on ID, photographs etc. It cheers me up on dark evenings! The only problem this year has been that I cannot source a blank A4 bound notebook. There are few artist style pads , with too few pages and thick painting paper inside. I tried an internet search, but didn't come up with any obvious sources. Does any one know of a suitable supply?
Thanks . John

I only take notes when i go out specifically birding, normally with lists and numbers of common birds and more detailed notes on rarer more interesing birds (especially new birds or ones i still have trouble IDing). I do now note locations, time and date of interesting birds i see day to day but not all. Any photos taken just get stored on my laptop - they are supposed to be sorted into groups of birds but im getting a bit slack with that recently!

Do people record all birds they see everyday?

I really should send my records to the County recorder and put them in Birdtrack (feel a bit guilty now as i don't do as much as i should).

I've been recording birds on my own excel spreadsheet since (blimey!) 1996. I've added a few sections for places outside the Western Palaearctic but it's not changed much since year one really. Not as sophisticated as any of the database/programmes but it works for me.

I use BTO Bird Track for work and home observations:

Field notes - now here's were I think we've got it more or less right. Since 2003 we've used Olympus dictaphones for all our "real" birding - i.e. in foreign countries or proper days out in the UK (too few and far between). We've used them for
a) recording the birds we've identified,
b) recording as much detail about the birds we haven't identified in the field,
c) keeping site notes, directions etc. and even
d) making notes about tourist relevant stuff for our trip reports.
I'll bet there are 100 species on our life lists that we've picked up from listening to our notes.

Up until now we've used tapes, but we've got through about 4 of them because they tend to break when dropped and they get dropped a lot. Julie bought me a rather smashing digital voice recorder last month that is tiny - about half the size/weight of a small mobile phone - and can take over 120 hours of recording. It's more or less solid state as well, so might survive a fall better. Not sure how it will cope with a tropical swamp yet, but time will tell.

Certainly worth considering if you're handwriting is awful or you have a tendency to spill your coffee on your notebook. You can't draw in them, of course, but I can't draw for toffee, so there's no loss there.

Another benefit of a voice recorder - when we're away, we take our notebook and pen with us to dinner and sit and write out the days list, sifting through the field guide to try to identify "the ones that nearly got away". It's a way to relive the days birding in detail (and in order!) and of course you don't just get the words - there's the sounds as well. Wind in the trees, waves on the shore, bird calls, heavy breathing - the last one's us of course, knackered from the heat, the climb or just the early mornings.

On a slightly different tack...

This is my dilemma!
Having been fortunate enough to find a couple of rarities in my life, I always face the same conundrum, which when laced with the huge adrenaline rush that accompanies such a moment, means there is a choice of what to do first:

1. Take notes (I do carry a notebook)
2. Take a photo (I usually have some kind of camera on me)
3. Phone the news out
4. Enjoy watching the bird

This choice often causes me sheer panic. In cases where I have been immediately sure of the ID, I have gone for option 3 first, ie get some birding friends on the bird asap. Whilst waiting for them to appear, you can then attempt options 1 and 2, and once that has been done, and if the bird is still showing, you can attempt 4, or perhaps pass out! Getting the news out first is good for maintaining good relations with birding peers, but if you are unable to contact the first few people, you can waste a fair bit of time that you could otherwise have spent taking notes etc.

Another point that someone else made earlier, is to practise taking descriptions, particularly when on twitches. This will avoid the situation of "where to start" when faced with a rarity with complex plumage. Finding something like a rare wader will require a lot of plumage and structural detail to be recorded and unless you get used to describing feather tracts etc it can be quite a challenge when the adrenaline is flowing!
When practising, you can compare your description to a picture in a field guide when you get home, to see if you managed to capture all the key ID features adequately.

Apart from those fortunate enough to live on Fair Isle etc, finding rarities will be sadly all too infrequent for most of us, so keep practising with twitched birds or commoner species, so that when you find the big one, you will know what to do!

good luck
Jono Leadley
www.indybirder.com