I’ve been trying to fill in some old data from my iPod Touch.

I bought the program Drafts in April 2014 and was using that for my field notes for quite a while.

Before starting this blog project, I was exporting from Drafts into Day One to make attractive blog posts with included photos. There were drawbacks, however, and now I have a jumbled archive of scraps of notes, some of which are in this blog, some are in Day One, and some aren’t.

Exporting the database and going through the entries, it’s full of stuff like this.

2014-04-30 14:56:48 +0000
Some kind of browny gold wader with a white head and maybe an eye stripe.
Another with sort of black crown and belly. Maybe a pair?
More with reddish heAds and mottled grey and white bodies.

I guess you learn a lot in your first year of birding!

Although I’ve decided I prefer paper notebooks, Drafts remains a good way to take notes in the field. It’s important to get used to dating and noting the location of your entries. Textexpander is great for adding dates and times, and you could go even further with expansions for ‘gbb’ and ‘blackwit’ if desired. The other essential habit is to process the notes within a few days, not years later!