The Naturalist's Notebook: An Observation Guide and 5-Year Calendar-Journal for Tracking Changes in the Natural World around You

For those of you who find pleasure in observation and journaling, this book is a must. Subtitled “tracking changes in the natural world around you,” it is an informative and beautiful resource for observations and tracking of what is going on in your chosen habitat. And it is an autodidact’s delight, filled with useful and interesting information and crisp line drawings as illustrations.The authors are both academics as well as practitioners in the observation and understanding of the natural world. Their books are many and graced with notable awards. The wonder and curiosity of their studies makes for pleasure in reading.The book is a compilation of readings, drawings, and charts for the naturalist, be she professional, amateur, beginner, or professional. And it is just plain fun. The focus is on being attentive to the rhythms of nature.Attentiveness, or familiarity, is a basic requirement for the naturalist. What is significant in a habitat remains invisible without a genuine, direct, and contemplative connection with nature. And there is so much of note to observe.The authors suggest ways of becoming observant naturalists, experimental ways of learning, and how to truly know your own natural habitat. Where do you feel a sense of place? What do you see, hear, smell, taste, touch? Using these innate senses, we are led to a new appreciation of all that goes on in our own space. Recording these impressions enables development and insight into nature.A five-year calendar-journal is a necessary component to this book. It encourages self-learning. The calendar, with beautiful pen and ink drawings, is divided into sections which, place our observations in the realms of winter, spring, summer, and autumn.Rounding out the materials in this book are sections for your own personal glossary encouraging the use of abbreviations and symbols relevant to you, useful books, metric conversions, and timelines for the species and events you follow. This is a truly wonderful book to read, contemplate, and use for personal growth. Becoming a citizen-scientist as did Thoreau, creates a lasting and important record of nature.

The information regarding how to observe nature and record your observations in a fast well organized way is concise and beautiful. I love Bernd Heinrich's illustrations.

Being a life long naturalist and a long time fan of Bernd Heinrich , the choice to purchase this wonderful notebook was easy. Filled with delightful illustrations, it is a bird lovers dream. The layout is easy to follow, although the book is quite heavy and it's not a book I'll be carrying out in the field. It's more for recording your observations and sightings once you return home. I've kept nature journals for many years and wish they had come out with this sooner, but better late than never.

The book is nicely done. It gave me a lot of good ideas of items I might include in a Nature journal. For that, I found it very useful. The drawback to this journal is its size. There is not enough space for a given date for recording detailed nature observations. I still find it valuable, but the type of information that I plan to record needs more space. This book will serve more as my Index for a separate journal in which I record day-to-day details about the Nature I observe. That journal will contain pertinent weather data, records of plantings, sproutings, and harvests, animals and insects observed, and other similar data. There is far too much occurring out in the natural world for a single volume to follow for a five-year period. But, this provides a structure for what to observe, and will make an excellent index document.I also like the overall book design, and the quality of the paper and printing.

Great gift for a budding young naturalist (not too young) or adult. Very nicely done and gives good motivation to pay attention. Can be especially important now as the climate changes more quickly (it's really happening folks and not 'fake news'!) and things become less stable.

I liked this so much that I bought some as gifts for other nature lovers. It’s beautifully written and illustrated with plenty of room for five years of nature notes. For example, today I wrote “first snow flurries”! I use it as a calendar also.

This was a gift for my daughter. She just loved the book and thought the pictures were beautiful. She loves the outdoors and hopes to pursue a job in forestry. She plans on saving the journaling portion until she starts working as a way of tracking her experiences. The articles are very informative. The binding is beautiful. This book will truly be a treasure and a keepsake.

I have one of these and also gifted one to my mom - we both really enjoy tracking goings on in our yards/neighborhoods like when plants bloom, interesting weather occurrences, bird/wildlife sightings, etc. Now into my second year of using it, it is very interesting to note differences in dates that seasonal changes occur from year-to-year and to reminisce as I see last year's entries when I go to make one for this year.