Note Time in 2009

Nature Notes.09 Earl Plato

Keep nature notes! The late naturalist Bert Miller showed me how he kept records in nature, I was almost nine years old. I was recovering from that terrible disease poliomyelitis. I would sit at the living room window and watch purple martins, Baltimore orioles, and many other species. Bert said, “Write down the name if you know it. The date when seem and the location. If you can sketch the bird that helps. Check the colours.” I drew on my little pad what birds I saw from the window. I kept that record pad and added to it. I learned to sketch and colour birds Record keeping of trips became a habit. I still have many of those log pads
Love nature? Take some time to record what you have observed. Why? It’s good exercise and helps to keep you sharp in 2009.
***
I rambled many times with Bert Miller on Saturday walks. He would stop often and take out his little pad and pencil and write something down. Bert was an accomplished amateur biologist. So was my favourite nature writer, Edwin Teale. From the introduction to his lengthy novel, Wandering Through Winter, we read as follows: “Edwin Way Teale sits in the stern of his canoe… A small spiral notebook rests on his right knee, stubby pencil in hand, recording the immediate details of what he had just seen. This picture is indelible for me… because it catches the quintessence as the ultimate meticulous nature writer.” So wrote fellow naturalist Ann Haymond Zwinger.
Want to be a nature writer? I have done it twenty plus years.
Yes, I keep notes.