The old lady who showed me her 20 year bird journal

I was out by my feeder last Tuesday and saw my neighbor Mrs. Patterson sitting on her porch with a green notebook. She called me over and showed me she’s been writing down every bird visitor since 2004, over 4,000 entries! She had a whole page on a yellow-bellied sapsucker that stopped by for three days straight. Has anyone else kept a log that long or am I just lazy with my phone notes?

2 comments

2 Comments

rivera.simon16d ago

Wait, so she just watches birds all day for 20 years?

rowanbennett16d ago

Good on Mrs. Patterson. That's real dedication. @rivera.simon the thing is, she's not just "watching birds all day." She's building a data set. Twenty years of daily notes. That's a climate record. Scientists use stuff like that to track migration shifts and population changes. She's basically an unpaid biologist with better handwriting than most of us. We're all out here with our phones taking blurry pictures, and she's got the real science happening on her porch.