The Field Naturalist can never be bored and my notebook and pencil are always with me. A snatch of bird song is heard and identified and added to my records, perhaps only a Blackbird or Robin but it does build up a picture of the wildife in any area you may visit if only once.

Sometimes what we call a top to toe survey of a particular site can throw up many records from tiny fungi growing on dead matter, a nice showy flower or a leaf mine. One can often find inverterates feeding on certain plants, Butterflies nectaring on certain flowers, even land molluscs under logs and stones.

My favoured method is to record all the singing and calling birds, nesting birds and feeding species, followed by the plants in flower and then in vegetative condition and fruiting. Perhaps in the course of my study I will find tiny fungi, the larger agarics and rusts on leaves.

Every habitat is a goldmine and a new site is just as rewarding as visiting a regular study area.

Try it yourselves and look for and record everything you can identify, soon you too will be bitten by the bug and follow this up with a nature diary and perhaps in time your own records on a spreadsheet.

Colin Jacobs