In an old, black, vinyl-covered, three-inch-thick, three-ringed binder from way back in my school days, the hundreds of pages are divided into groupings. The sections are separated from one another by stiffened sheets with colorful plastic tabs attached. The green tab reads "ferns," the yellow one "insects," and the blue one "weeds," and there are other colors and groupings.

I randomly open the notebook, find myself in the red-tabbed "birds" section, and here's what it says:

It's really neat knowing exactly where I was on Easter Sunday morning way back on April 18th, 1976. I was visiting my parents on the farm in Kentucky. I can visualize that early morning, perhaps even before my parents presented my Easter basket -- a tradition continued far into my adulthood. I entered my old Volkswagen Beetle and drove to Cypress Creek a couple of miles away. If I think hard, maybe imagining more than remembering, I can recall that early-spring morning, the fresh, pale green leaves unfurling on trees, the odor of moist earth from still-unplowed soybean fields along the creek...

In short, this sheet of paper is a souvenir of a time past. It feels good to remember those Easter baskets, and driving in the old Volkswagen down the gravel road to Cypress Creek, as the cold air gushed through the rusted-out spot below my feet. And it's even good to see which birds I saw that day.

To tell the truth, the list itself isn't a very spectacular one. Not a single species on it can be considered rare or out of the ordinary. These are exactly the birds to be expected along a bushy, weedy creek bank in mid April, in my part of Kentucky.

However, it's also true that what I now know very largely results from my having compiled hundreds of lists similar to this one. In 1976, I was just learning which migrants arrived first. Once I'd amassed several years of lists, gradually the impressions began dawning: Yes, Black-throated Green and Hooded Warblers, and Yellowthroats, they're the "early birds," the migrating species arriving first arriving from farther north during spring migration.

If I'd been noting which wildflowers were blossoming, I might have sketched the ones I learned that day, to help me remember their special features. Some of my pages are full of drawings and notes.

In other words, my nature study notes have always been, and continue to be, a real "tool" used as my insights into nature keep growing, evolving, and branching into new fields of interest. It can be the same way for you.

Nowadays I keep my notes on the computer (and back them up fastidiously!) You might be interested in the computer-friendly ideas for  organizing your notes on our Note Organization Page.

When you begin your listing, if you can take pictures of your discoveries, consider posting your IDs at the wonderful iNaturalist.Org website.