Want more birds in your yard?
Combine your two hobbies...
There's the gardening. Plant tags, a rough plan, notes somewhere about what went in where and whether it took.
And there's the bird-watching. A list of who turned up. Maybe an app, maybe a notebook by the window.
They're the same hobby. You've just never had anywhere to write them down that way.
What it tracks, page by page
Six page types do all the work. Here's what each one asks you for, and what you get back for filling it in.
Start here: your patch on one page
What it tracks. Where you are, what's already growing, what the light and the water do, and what's next door that you don't control.
Why you'll love having it. You will forget. Honestly, you will. In three years this is the only proof of what the place used to be, back before the hedge filled in and the bare corner stopped being bare. Fill it in once and never again.
One bird, one morning, in detail
What it tracks. Date, time, weather, light. Who you saw and what they were doing. What they were interacting with, a plant or the feeder or water or the ground. What the garden was doing that day, which insects you noticed and on which plant, and a box to sketch in. There are 72 of these.
Why you'll love having it. "What was it doing" is the question nobody thinks to ask themselves. Answer it fifty times and you stop seeing a bird and start seeing a bird doing something, which is the whole game.
What the month actually did
What it tracks. What's blooming, what's seeding or fruiting, which insects showed up and on which plant, what changed since last month, what's getting eaten and what's getting ignored, who arrived and who left.
Why you'll love having it. "What's getting ignored" might be the most useful line in the journal. It's how you learn which seed is worth refilling and which shrub is really earning its spot.
Who's here, month by month
What it tracks. One row per species, twelve columns. Tick the months you saw it.
Why you'll love having it. After one year it's a picture of your patch. After three it's data. You'll see in one glance who lives here, who's only here for the summer, who's just passing through in April and October, and which species quietly stopped coming, which is the one you'd never notice any other way.
The page that gets better every year
What it tracks. Species down the side, five springs across the top, and room underneath for what shifted and what you think moved it.
Why you'll love having it. By year two you're putting the nectar feeder out the week before the hummingbirds arrive, because last year's row tells you when. No field guide can give you that, because no field guide knows your yard.
Plant to Bird, the one no other journal has
What it tracks. The plant, the season you added it, what it offers (insects, seeds, berries or fruit, nectar, cover, nesting material), who used it, and when.
Why you'll love having it. Plants provide seeds, fruit, or nectar, and support insects. They provide shelter and nesting grounds. That's what the bird came to your garden or patch for. Writing down that middle link is what turns "I planted a serviceberry" into "the waxwings cleared it in nine days." Once you can see that, you know exactly what to plant more of. It's the reason this journal exists.
This is not your typical journal.
In your garden the interesting question isn't "Which bird is that?".
It's "Why this bird, here, now?".
Plants provide seeds, fruit, or nectar, and support insects. They provide shelter and nesting grounds. That's what the bird came to your garden or patch for.
That middle link is what this journal is built around, and it's what no other bird journal records.
What you planted → what it offers → who took it, and when.
It works whether you can name every bird in the yard or none of them
You do not need to know your birds to start. That's what most of the front of this journal is for.
If you're new, Things to Notice teaches you what to look at before you know what you're looking at. Size, shape, how it moves, where it feeds, what it does when something spooks it. Those are the things that actually let you identify a bird later, and they're the things a checklist never asks for. The back matter points you to Merlin Bird ID, which will name a bird from a photo or a sound in about four seconds.
If you've been watching birds for thirty years, you'll skip most of that and live in the Plant to Bird log and the multi-year First Arrivals pages, because those hold the questions you can't answer from memory. Was the serviceberry earlier this year? Do the waxwings come before or after the robins clear it?
Same journal, different doors in.
This is for you if
- You like your garden and you like birds, and you'd like the two to have more to do with each other
- You've wondered whether the things you plant are actually helping, and had no easy way to tell
- You want more native plants in your yard and you'd like to see who turns up for them
- You'd enjoy getting to know the regulars in your own yard, season by season
You don't need a big garden, a feeder, or any idea what you're looking at. One patch you can see from a window is plenty. This is a journal for one place watched closely, not a travel list.
$19
Instant download, emailed right after checkout
What you'll know by this time next year
🌱 Which plants actually earned their space. Not which ones looked good. Which ones had birds on them, and what those birds were after. That's the difference between buying plants on a hunch and buying them on evidence.
🌱 When your birds arrive, to the week. Your own first-arrival dates, for your own yard. No field guide can give you that, because no field guide knows where you live.
🌱 What's nesting, and where. Once you know to watch for a bird carrying grass or fur or a twig, you can't unsee it. You'll find nests you'd have walked past for years.
🌱 Why the feeder went quiet in May. Spoiler: nothing's wrong. Natural food came back and the birds took it. Knowing that saves you a season of worrying you did something wrong.
🌱 What to plant next, and why. Not from somebody's list. From your own record of what worked in your own soil.
What you'll get better at
🪺 Noticing. The prompts do this to you whether you mean them to or not. Once you've been asked “what was it doing?” fifty times, you stop seeing a bird and start seeing a bird doing something.
🪺 Naming. Backwards from how most people try. You don't memorize a field guide and then go looking. You watch the same bird for a month, get curious enough to look it up, and the name sticks because you earned it.
🪺 Predicting. By year two you'll be putting the nectar feeder out the week before the hummingbirds show, because last year's page told you when.
What you get with your purchase
- The journal, 157 pages. Print-ready at 8.5 x 11, with an A4 edition for outside the US. Four seasonal sections, 72 observation pages, and tracking logs that get better every year you keep them.
- Instant download. Emailed right after checkout. Print it at home or at a print shop, or import it into GoodNotes and write on it with a stylus. Yours to reprint for as many years as you keep it.
BONUSThe Refill Pack
- A printed journal runs out. This one doesn't. The refill pack is a second file: the observation pages, the monthly overviews, and the logs on their own, with the season headings stripped off, so a page you print in October doesn't say Spring across the top.
- Print more whenever you want. Fill your last observation page in July and you print ten more that afternoon. Have a year good enough to need forty, print forty. Start clean in 2028 without buying anything.
- It's the one thing a printed book can't do. It's also the reason this journal is still working for you in year three.
Included in the same download, at no extra cost.
BONUSPrintable Tabs
- Go straight to the season you're in. Tabs for Start Here, the four seasons, Records, and Notes, so finding last April's arrivals doesn't mean thumbing through 157 pages.
- They work with whatever you already have. Fold-and-tape tabs that need nothing but scissors and tape, and they go on any binding. Plus ready-to-print insert sheets laid out for Avery Big Tab dividers, in both the 5-tab and the 8-tab size, so a pack from the drawer lines up the first time.
- Blank tabs come with it. You'll want sections this journal didn't think of. The feeder log, the nest boxes, the one hedge you can't stop watching.
Also included in the same download, at no extra cost.
Today is the perfect day to start
A few weeks in, you start noticing things you used to walk past. The sparrow that only ever works the same three feet of hedge. The goldfinches that don't turn up until the coneflowers have gone brown and ugly, which is the moment you stop cutting them back.
Give it a year and you'll have a record of one place in your own handwriting. Give it three and you'll know things about your garden nobody else on earth knows.
You don't need a garden
You don't have to own the ground, and you don't have to be growing anything. Plenty of people will keep this for a patch they can't change and wouldn't want to. A bench with a view of one oak. The hedge along the parking lot at work. A single street tree you pass every morning.
Pick a patch and watch it. You'll learn the same things either way: who's here, what they're eating, what shifts when the season turns.
Why I made this
I bought a house with two yards and two different jobs for them. The front, I wanted to actively garden. The back, I wanted to rewild for the birds.
Then I hit the problem. What's working, what isn't, which plant actually brought a bird in and which one just looked good doing nothing, none of that is something you can track in your average journal. Garden journals never ask about the birds. Bird journals never ask about the plants.
So I made the one that asks about both.
$19
Plant now, watch all year, and by next autumn you'll know which plants earned their space.
🐦 Thank you
A small thing to say before you go.
Buying this puts a record in your hands that gets more valuable every year you keep it. Year one is a notebook. Year three is evidence. You'll be able to point at a shrub and say exactly what it brought to the birds and when, which is not a thing you can get back later if you didn't write it down.
Thank you. Genuinely. Go plant something.
Jaymi, Better With Birds
Questions
Is this a physical book?
No. It's a digital download you print yourself, which is what lets you print more pages whenever you run out. A print edition is planned for 2027.
How do I get it?
It arrives by email right after checkout.
Can I use it on a tablet?
Yes. Import the PDF into a notes app like GoodNotes, Notability, or Noteshelf and write on it with a stylus, the same way you would on paper.
Do I have to print the whole thing?
No, and it's easier if you don't. Print a season at a time. Cheaper, lighter to carry, and you're not staring at nine months of blank pages in March.
How do I bind it?
Whatever's easiest. A three-ring binder is the most flexible. Disc binding lies flattest. Any print shop will coil-bind it for a few dollars. There's a page inside covering all four.
Will it work where I live?
Yes. The seasonal sections use ecological cues rather than dates, so early spring means whenever early spring happens for you.
What year is it for?
Any year. It's undated. Start in July if you want to, skip three weeks because life happened, and nothing goes stale.
Do I need a feeder?
No. Some of the best bird gardens don't have one. Every feeder prompt is written as “if that's your setup.”
Do I need to know my birds already?
No. There's a Things to Notice section built for exactly this, and the back matter points you to Merlin Bird ID, which will name a bird from a photo or a sound.
Can I get a refund?
No. It's a digital file that downloads the moment you buy it, so all sales are final. If anything goes wrong with the download itself, email me and I'll sort it out. That part I can always fix.
Can I share the file?
It's for your own personal use. Print as many pages as you want, as often as you want, for as long as you want. Just please don't resell it or pass the file around.