This is one of those "do as I say, not as I do" kind of articles. My birding friends will chuckle as I advocate for keeping good field notes on your birding trips, because mine have been, well, non-existent. But I will implore you to keep track, because I realize what a wonderful resource it could have been, if I had kept good notes in the nearly 40 years I've been at this.
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There are several reasons to keep good field notes, if nothing else but to refresh the memory of your numerous trips into the field. If you keep any kind of life, county, or other list, good field notes are essential when the taxonomists split birds into separate species. That Plain Titmouse you saw in southeast Arizona in 1981, for example, is now a Juniper Titmouse, no longer the Oak Titmouse you might have in your California backyard, and is another tick on your life list. (And in case anyone is wondering … just because the Juniper Titmouse pictured to the left is actually in a juniper tree, does not make it a good field mark to distinguish the two. )
Your field notes could also be an invaluable tool for future researchers. Recently, a set of notes was donated to the local Audubon society, and were passed on to our county compiler, Tom Edell. There were some rare sightings in those notes, which added to the status and distribution records of our county's data bank.
So what should you include in your field notes? I'll refer again to Tom Edell, certainly the local guru of field notes. Before he lists any bird sightings, he'll note the location, the date, the time, the temperature (yes, his car has a thermometer), weather conditions (wind speed, cloud cover, etc.) and any other observers with him.
Audubon Journal
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He'll list the birds using four letter alpha banding codes. Every bird has been designated a code, usually the first two letters of its name. Turkey Vulture is TUVU for example, though it doesn't always work intuitively. Savannah Sparrow is SASP as you would expect, but Sage Sparrow is SAGS to help alleviate any confusion. If interested, you can see the codes at Bird Pop.org. (As an even further aside, here's a humorous lament to the alpha codes written by Eric Johnson, former ornithology professor at Cal Poly - Calpoly.edu )
Of course, you can use any kind of shorthand you are comfortable with, and for accurate reporting, the number of each species seen is recorded. If Tom is birding in several locations, he will make a new page for each stop with all the appropriate notations. By now, he must have a library full of small pocket notebooks. Truly a remarkable resource.
As you can no doubt guess, there are several listing programs available to help record your bird sightings on your computer, but unless you are bringing some kind of electronic device into the field, the paper notebook is still essential to record your sightings for future entry.
On the subject of computers, I would like to make a plug for a site called eBird. It is a free, online database where birders can enter information from their field notes. It is quickly becoming a very valuable resource. In March of this year alone, over 3.1 million checklists have been submitted in North America to the eBird web page. With those kinds of numbers, trends of birds declining (or rising) in numbers, and changes in bird distribution can more easily be seen.
The site will keep track for you your total numbers seen, and can let you know total numbers for your yard or county or favorite birding patch. You can search birding spots around the country with their map feature, which can be very valuable when researching a travel destination.
In every county, a compiler (again, Tom Edell in San Luis Obispo county) has set up filters so that a rare bird, or even larger than average numbers of uncommon birds will be flagged, so that the compiler can determine, often with a follow-up email, if that sighting is valid. Do not be offended though, if you receive one of these queries to your sighting. The compilers are only trying to keep the data as accurate as they can. And, if you need any further reinforcement for this article, small notes jotted down in your field notebook can come in handy in this situation when the memory might fail you.
