How to Record your Bird Sightings

How to Record your Bird Sightings
Hello. Welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Peterson, and I'm the director of the Important Bird Areas Program for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Today, we're here at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, Massachusetts, where we'll be talking about bird identification and some of the equipment and essential tools that are useful to get one started in this incredibly interesting pastime. One of the things that is particularly important to do as a beginning birder, or even as an experienced birder for that matter, is to keep track of what you're seeing. And, to do this, a small pocket notebook, something along the size and design of this, is a perfectly appropriate way to go. Some of them come with waterproof paper. Some don't. A pen or a pencil is certainly satisfactory for keeping notes. But the idea is to record what you're seeing while you're seeing it in the field. So that, in addition to the date, and the locality where you're going birding, you can begin to record not only the species that you see, but also some sense of how many you're seeing, in other words, the number of individual birds. Because over time, this kind of information can be particularly valuable and some service to, not only to you, but possibly to others who may be interested in your field notes down the line. Now, the subject of specifically what else to record is entirely up to you based on your particular interests. As a beginning birder, in many cases, you may want to take notes or descriptions of whatever the bird is that you're looking at so that, in addition to what you're looking at at the time that you see the bird, you can go back to your notes, compare it to pictures in your field guide, and so on. One of the useful things that can be often used in along with a small notebook is a checklist. Checklists are available for states, in some cases, counties, in some cases national wildlife refuges and state parks. But, they give you some idea of the bird species that may be found in that area. And in the case of something like this, Massachusetts Daily Field Card, that Mass. Audubon has produced, we have symbols and alphanumerics that will tell the user at what times of the year a particular species may be seen by month and by week. The twelve months are indicated by the numbers one through twelve. And, the four weeks of most months are indicated by the letters A, B, C, D.