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Field Notes Journal is a collection of observations drawn from an ongoing habit: noticing what's around me, and writing it down.
Over time, those notes have grown into a set of small, connected projects — each looking at a different aspect of the local environment. Some begin outdoors, on walks and in passing moments; others at a desk or bench, working more closely with instruments and data. All are part of the same process: observe, record, and revisit.
The site brings these strands together as structured reports, charts, images, and datasets. The tools used to create them are modern, but the approach is a familiar one — patient, incremental, and shaped by repetition.
You'll find material here covering:
- Wildlife sightings and natural history records
- Aircraft observations and flight patterns
- Microscopy investigations and photomicrographic plates
- Weather observations from a developing local station
Each section stands on its own, but together they form a set of personal field notes: a way of turning day-to-day observations into something that can be explored over time.
The data behind these reports is collected using a small set of applications developed for my own use:
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Nature Recorder Used to log wildlife sightings and build long-term natural history records
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Flight Recorder Used to capture and analyse aircraft observations
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Raspberry Pi Weather Station A small environmental monitoring system that records local weather conditions
The photomicrographic plate catalogue is maintained using the following tools:
- Plate Library A simple SQLite-backed catalogue for microscopy plates and investigations
The following application is used to explore recordings of bat calls:
- Spectrogram Viewer A small command-line tool for processing and visualising audio recordings, combining a simple noise-reduction pipeline with waveform and spectrogram views.
In addition, the ADS-B tracking tools can also be used for live aircraft monitoring:
Across the site, the observations are gathered into a range of reports and summaries — ways of revisiting what's been recorded and seeing how it builds over time.
These include trends, annual patterns, species richness, aircraft movements, and environmental conditions. Alongside the charts and tables, there are also photomicrographic plate images and a growing library of wildlife audio and video recordings, capturing aspects of observation that sit beyond the numbers.
Each report combines visual summaries with downloadable data, so the underlying records can be explored in more detail if you wish.
All of the tools used to collect, organise, and present these records are open source.
They've been developed for personal use, but are shared in the same spirit as the rest of the project: if you're interested in keeping your own records — whether of wildlife, weather, or anything else — you're very welcome to explore the code and adapt it for your own purposes.