Backyard Big Year daily bird log. How do you keep track of your daily bird sightings or other birding activities?
Keeping track of your bird sightings is an important part of a Backyard Big Year–but it is important for all types of birding if you want to preserve a record of your efforts. I keep a daily list, which I then enter into eBird with additional numbers and notes. I don’t record as much info as I could in my daily notes, but try to enter my day’s sightings into eBird as soon as I can so that numbers and other notes about the sightings aren’t lost.
I start the day by creating a new page in the notebook. I make 30 hashmarks at the top of the page, so that each new bird I see for the day has a place for me to write its 4 letter banding code. I like doing this because it helps me easily see how many species I’ve seen so far that day.
I write additional notes about sightings, unusual numbers or anything else that I find interesting. I also record in the bottom corner the timing of my daily recordings with my OldBird21c microphone–which lately I’ve been running pretty much day and night to capture the bird activity in the yard. Who knows when I’ll have time to go through these recordings to look for additional species that may have slipped past while I was sleeping or not in the yard.
Often I will record the time of day I was outside in the yard, or how much of the time I was just listening to the microphone or watching from the windows. That stuff gets recorded on my eBird checklists–so I don’t always write it down, but if I’m in and out a lot doing other things, I try to record it so that I don’t forget exactly when I was outside or paying attention to the microphone. I also like to record what time I had interesting sightings, as well as how long it took me to find 20 or 30 species for the day.
At any rate, this is a system that works for me–mostly designed to help me keep track of my daily sightings–and Yard FOYs (circled) or other noteworthy sightings. Many people are now going to entering their sightings directly into eBird via mobile phone apps. I’m not there yet. I like writing down the birds as I see them, though even that bit of effort can take away from my time peering through the scope for those quick flyby ducks I so need to find!
How do you keep track of your bird sightings?
