My son is living with me at the moment, and he was a keen birdwatcher when he was younger. Living in a city for the past few years has meant he’s not had much access to wild spaces so he came with me to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. I gave him a birdwatching logbook, and took a new one for me too as I had finished my last one.
It was the perfect day: breezy and mild and not too busy. A couple of the hides were closed which was disappointing, but we still got to see a good number of birds. Avocets, Oystercatchers, and Skylarks provided the main soundtrack, with the harsh call of the Black-headed Gulls wheeling overhead as they squabbled. We walked around the perimeter of the Reserve before heading back to the Discovery Centre for some much-needed refreshment.
I’ve been really bonding with my logbooks recently, and I think my sketchbook practice has really informed how I go about recording what I see. The booklets are meant to be used, and I specifically chose art-grade paper so that all media could be deployed, and I’ve also been personalising my own copies so that I can really enjoy looking at them afterwards, a bit like with my regular sketchbooks. Being so inexpensive, they are great to embellish and make your own and as I so enjoy looking back over my sketchbooks, I wanted to transfer this over to my logbooks rather than just filling them in and doing some little doodles on the back pages.
So, with that in mind, I have got a few logbooks on the go at the moment, and they are really inspiring me to go and look at what’s out there. Here are some photos from our trip today:
Here is my logbook, ready to take out again when I next visit, and given that the logbooks are so inexpensive, that gives a fabulous record of a day out birdwatching with my son for less than the price of a coffee!
I’ve added an A7 envelope for loose items, and stapled on some recycled string to keep it shut.
I’m so pleased with how the paper takes the paint – here I used watercolour, fineliner and gouache, and stuck on some of my tiny stickers of the birds we saw.
We saw 21 species, 13 of which we could tick off in our logbooks – not bad for an hour’s walk and considering two of the hides weren’t accessible. Tristan spotted a Reed Bunting, and there were two Mute Swans as well as a couple of male Stonechats.
I’m experimenting with some different ways of customising my logbooks. Let me know if you have any ideas of your own.
