How to start a nature journal (no art skills needed)

To start a nature journal, take a plain notebook and a pencil outside, sit in one spot for twenty minutes, and record what you see with a quick drawing, a few words, and the date, place and weather. That is a complete first entry. Everything else is refinement.

A nature journal is not an art portfolio. It is a record of attention. A wobbly drawing of a beetle with a note that says "green shine on the wing cases, walked under the leaf when my shadow passed" is worth more than a polished picture copied from a photograph.

What you need

• A notebook with plain or lightly gridded pages. One that fits a coat pocket will come with you more often.
• A pencil and a small sharpener, or a pen you like.
• Optional: a few coloured pencils or a small watercolour set.
• Optional: a hand lens, for tiny things such as moss, lichen and the hairs on a stem.
• Optional: binoculars, for birds and anything you should not approach.

Buy nothing else until you have filled a few pages. You will learn what you actually reach for.

Set up each page the same way

Start every entry in the top corner with the same four notes:

• Date and time.
• Place, as exactly as you like: "back step", "oak by the bus stop", or a park name.
• Weather: sun or cloud, wind, rough temperature.
• What the season is doing: first frost, leaves turning, buds swelling.

This header takes a minute and turns a pile of sketches into a record. Months later you can flip back and see when the same plant flowered, or what was flying on a warm October afternoon.

Choose a sit spot

Pick one place you can reach easily, even a window box or a strip of lawn, and return to it often. Sit still for a few minutes before you draw anything. Creatures that hid when you arrived often come back out once you stop moving, and your eyes adjust to the small scale.

Returning to the same spot is the secret of a good journal. You begin to notice change: the caterpillar that was on the nettle last week, the seed heads where there were flowers, the spider that rebuilds its web in the same corner.

How to look and draw

• Start with the overall shape. Is it long, round, branching, flat? Draw that outline lightly first.
• Count things: legs, petals, leaflets, spots. Write the number beside the drawing.
• Measure roughly. Compare the subject with something you know, such as the width of your thumbnail.
• Look at how the parts join: where a leaf meets the stem, where a wing meets the body.
• Add colour notes in words if you have no colours with you: "rust brown, paler underneath".
• Draw the same thing more than once, from different sides, on the same page.

If your subject moves away, write down what it was doing. Behaviour is as much a part of a creature as its shape.

Write as well as draw

Words fill the gaps that drawings leave. Three questions keep the notes flowing:

• What do I see right now?
• What is it doing, and what is around it?
• What do I want to find out?

The questions belong on the page too. "Why are the ants climbing only this stem?" is a perfectly good entry, and sometimes you answer it three visits later.

Leave wildlife undisturbed

The best entries come from watching, not handling.

• Observe from where you are. If an animal changes what it is doing because of you, you are too close; step back.
• Do not move eggs, nests, chrysalises or caterpillars to get a better view. Bring your eyes to them, slowly, or use binoculars.
• Avoid touching caterpillars at all. Some have hairs or spines that irritate skin.
• Keep well away from nesting birds. A nest is no place for a long sketch.
• Leave stones and logs where they lie. The animals beneath them depend on that damp shelter.
• Draw flowers where they grow rather than picking them, and follow the rules of parks and reserves, many of which restrict collecting.

A drawing made from a few metres away, with a note about the distance, is still a true record. A creature disturbed for the sake of a sketch makes a poorer one.

Keep the habit small

• Aim for one short entry a week rather than a long one once a month.
• Keep the notebook and pencil together, ready by the door.
• Leave mistakes on the page. Crossed-out lines show how your eye corrected itself.
• When you cannot go out, journal from a window. Birds at a feeder, rain on a leaf and clouds all count.

Good to know

You do not need to know the name of something to draw it. Draw first, describe it carefully, and look up the name later. Often the drawing itself, with its count of legs and its shape of leaf, is what lets you find the name at all.