Subject: field notes
Date: Mar 23 15:29:54 1995
From: Jobless in Seattle - cccc at u.washington.edu


David Buckley writes:
> been most useful, other than listing species, locations, etc. I use
> AVISYS for listing and location data, but I would like to get back to
> making *field* notes and I thought some tweeter-based inspiration might
> help. Thanks in advance.

I can't advise you on what to include in your notes, but will say that
the latest technology called "palm-tops" ( a scaled down laptop
which is about the size of a hand-held calculator) are available at
the University of Washington Bookstore. They currently run a limited
version of windows, and could prove to be quite useful for taking
field notes. You could, for example, write a program to abbreviate
species and provide a simple tallier to keep count of a day's twitching,
then upon return home, connect the palmtop to your PC and download the
day's data.

I personally keep my day lists on the local UNIX machine, and
use a simple text editor (VI) to input the data which I simply
remember as best I can when I return home. I don't keep track of
too much info other than weather conditions, numbers of each
species, location and date.

One thing which I do find very useful in areas other than bird study
is the dates. I often am in a position where I must remember a date
(for a job application, etc.) and simply try to recall which birds I saw
around that time. Then my bird list gives me the answer.


Neil J. Fergusson ******************
1405 1/2 NE 56th St. * Baffins *
Seattle, WA 98105 * or *
(206) 517-5466 * bust *
cccc at u.washington.edu ******************