NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

I first committed my birding observations to a notebook back in the summer of 1974. They were no more than a short list of the birds that I had seen in the garden, carefully scribed in biro, my handwriting as neat as I could manage. By the start of 1975 the notebook had grown in size and was joined by a 'page per day' diary, on which a narrative appeared. This model stayed in place until 1980, when the diaries were dropped and the notebook entries took on the form of lengthy essays, full of flowery writing, bird descriptions, expressions of emotion and what I considered to be noteworthy observations. The notebooks - all smart, hard-backed affairs - remained until 2000, when handwritten accounts gave way to the computer and the printed page. What new technology also allowed was photographs to be inserted into my prose, and these pages became colourful and vibrant reminders of my time in the field, and were held together in a giant ring-binder. It was not until 2013 that I rev...

I've been keeping notes since 1974. A field notebook as a starting point, then the days counts, highlights and descriptions being transferred into a 'posh' hard-backed volume. Or computerised. I've switched between using the computer (soulless) to paper (organic) a few times, but ease and laziness has dictated that, for the moment, the keyboard and screen wins. My enthusiasm of youth spawned rambling narrative over several pages. My impatient middle-age can turn a day into a list of names and numbers. Most unsatisfactory. I've even considered giving up taking notes - but this knee-jerk reaction has been kept at bay so far. After all, I don't want to lose my 40 years of consecutive record, even if, when I die, it is all consigned to a skip. But I am still questioning what I write (or type) and why I do it. The internet has made the sending in of information much easier. I no longer refer to my notes at the end of a given year to collate the records to send to...