Nature Journaling Protects Birds and the Places They Need

 Audubon News Read More 

At the western edge of Florida, just miles from the Alabama border, Shorebird Stewardship Senior Coordinator Brian Cammarano hops out of his National Audubon Society truck with a camera, scope, and tripod. He’s in counting mode, monitoring overwintering sea and shorebird species that need quiet, natural beaches to rest and feed until they migrate away in the spring or begin nesting. It’s 2026, but an important field tool is the same one biologists and nature enthusiasts have been using for centuries: a simple notebook.

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More than 120 years ago, Margret Burton took a boat from Key West to the Dry Tortugas, arriving in May and staying until mid-July. In addition to the various survival essentials, she had her own small notebook, meant for recording observations of the bird species that nest in what is now a national park. She noted nesting habits for Sooty Terns, Brown Noddies, Magnificent Frigatebirds, and more, all information she eventually took back to the American Ornithological Union. In many cases, she records the same information of interest to Audubon’s biologists today: Where are the nests? What do they look like? How many eggs do the birds lay?

In one entry, she describes Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies: “[They] lay their eggs in the sand without any nest but usually under a bush or a weed: as a rule they lay but one egg as I have found but two nests containing more and have not found any nests of the noddys (sic) as having more than one.”

Check Audubon’s bird guide today, and her observations are echoed: These seabirds usually lay just one egg.

While digital tools – especially cameras – now augment the paper notebook, biologists still prefer its glare-free pages, small size, and low cost compared to other methods.

Cammarano says he wouldn’t “go a day in the field without my ‘Rite in the Rain’ notebook.” Why? These notebooks are “specifically made to withstand elements like extreme heat, sweat, sand, and rain. Phones are not, and the glare is the worst out on the beach.” There are other reasons the notebook just works better: “I’m usually writing shorthand details,” Cammarano continues, “banding codes and tallying counts as I survey. All those things would not transcribe efficiently on my phone by having to constantly deal with formatting and autocorrecting details.”

Plus, phones are distracting, adds Tampa Seabird and Shorebird Biologist Abby McKay, not to mention sand in your charge port and dealing with the threat of low battery issues. McKay appreciates that she can sketch out where birds are nesting within large groups. “I think a notebook captures more than your phone!” she points out.

It’s not just biologists; many birders want a break from their screens. Senior Communications Associate Renée Wilson uses just the four-letter abbreviations to record the species she sees foraging in her backyard – after all, her notes are just to jog her own memory (or for the rainy day when she decides to add them all to eBird). Along with notes about interesting behavior and stars that denote a rare or first-of-the-season sighting, she can see trends in the reproductive success of resident birds and the timing of arrival of migrating birds. She even confirmed the presence of nesting Northern Parulas in her yard, a species her old field guide showed as only migrating or wintering in her area. 

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In addition to recording critical information, the act of writing with a pen or pencil on physical pages allows biologists, birders, and artists alike to see and remember what they saw differently than if they took no notes or typed up observations on a phone or computer.

In The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen explains that “Multiple studies have found that students who take lecture notes on laptops don’t learn as well as those who write with pen and paper.” Why? “[T]yping encourages verbatim note-taking, rather than paraphrasing, summarizing and concept mapping, which are much more effective ways at encoding new information in the memory.”

It’s not just the benefits of summarization – it’s the physicality of pen and paper itself. Allen explains: “The physical labor seems to play a part, as we encode memories better when muscular effort is involved.”

When Logan Davis started her past seasonal work as the Tyndall shorebird biologist for Audubon, she needed to record bird bands she spotted while on regular beach surveys. Effective bird band recording must include the location and color sequence of the bands. That’s relatively easy to do if photographs are possible, but often Davis saw these fast-moving sea and shorebirds through a spotting scope. Accuracy is critical, as the data she collected contributes to behavior, longevity, and movement studies that help researchers protect the birds and their habitat.

So, she drew herself a cheat sheet! Across two pages in her field notebook, Davis carefully sketched the different colors of the potential bands, their leg placement, the most challenging color combinations, and a series of twelve practice bands and their correct band colors. The two pages acted as a reference in the field, but the act of making the pages gave her practical experience by learning about and recording bands before she entered the more challenging beach environment.

These sketches and memory aids help not just new biologists in the field, but expert naturalists too. Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary Director of Public Programs, Sally Stein, is a master naturalist, but still frequently sketches within the Sanctuary’s 13,000 acres to remain familiar with the flora and fauna that call this place home. Wetlands Restoration Specialist Danielle Ivey, a certified nature journaling instructor in her free time, includes frequent field note reminders in her sketches of birds: What do the wing feathers look like? What do the bird’s legs look like? What vegetation is nearby? “Nature journaling has helped me slow down and reclaim my attention in a noisy and often disconnected world,” Ivey says. “It allows me to focus on my love of the nature and nurtures my endless curiosity.”

For artists, their nature sketches are the basis for larger works in different media. Lauren Austin, former Artist in Residence at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, often came to sketch the ambassador birds at the center. Their forms later returned in her award-winning quilts.

Austin loves raptors and seeks them out in each new place she has lived. “I like to sketch and paint the birds to use their images in my art. I make quilts with images of raptors, either from my drawings or from x-rays of the birds in the triage unit,” she says.

Traveling to the Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland, Florida, Austin appreciated that she could spend hours with the birds: “I love that I can sit and observe for as long as I need to work on an image.” Her special favorites were Ronia the Red-shouldered Hawk, Merlin the Barred Owl, Hank the Osprey, and Chopper the Peregrine Falcon.

Austin’s “Birds Are My People” collection depicts birds and people together, brought to life in vivid colors and intricate stitches. Chopper was replicated in the quilt collection, as were Merlin and Hank.

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For biologists, educators, artists, birders, and more, the nature journal serves as a critical asset in the field, when reflecting on experiences at home, and even as display pieces to teach others about birds and the places they need. Are you inspired to keep your own nature journal? Go for it!