Monday, July 25, 2016

Life List Notebooks

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been working on a new project, well here it is.


I have always kept lists of the birds I see in the field while working on different projects or simply bird watching, but I have never had a notebook dedicated to birds.  Last fall I decided I was going to find and buy a birding notebook and start keeping a life list on January 1st 2016.  Well, I couldn't find what I wanted on Google.  I found some artsy handmade ones on Etsy and some hurricane-proof Rite-in-the-Rain ones, but I wanted something durable enough to last a month in my back pocket but cheap enough to justify having a new one each month.

I found pocket notebooks for beer drinkers, stargazers, wine sippers, comic book artists and even cheese tasters but not for birders, so I decided to make my own!

Then I started thinking how cool it would be if each notebook featured a bird portrait and a cover color to represent that bird - a small feature that would keep the notebooks fresh and completed ones would create a rainbow of birding adventures on my shelf.  So I started with some herons...

Great Blue Heron

 Green Heron

 and Little Blue Heron

I also wanted each notebook to have a little bit of information on the featured species, so they do...


Each inside cover has fields for personal data...


The back inside cover has a Handy Map of Bird Anatomy and some common birding abbreviations...


Each notebook has 23 of  the two-page spread shown below - plenty of room for information, bird lists and a small sketch or two!


If your a birder or know one you can purchase Life List Notebooks at www.lifelistnotebooks.com

I have a some others planned so stay tuned...

4 comments:

Lois said...

I am so grateful to find your website. It truly shows your love for nature through your lovely sketches, painting and written documentation. Plus you've created your own personal journal books for expressing and documenting your observations. I look forward to receiving and reading future posts from you.

Lisa at Greenbow said...

These notebooks are cool as are your sketches.

K.M. Collier said...

Your sketches are wonderful. Thank you for the inspiration.

Anonymous said...

Nate,
I like the notebooks but not the lined pages.
Blank pages would be so much nicer for drawing one’s finds on the trail.
Always enjoy your drawings.
You have inspired me to take up colored pencils and I really like the Polychromos.
Please keep posting,
Aujouret Seine