I have now begun to officially keep a phenological record. Phenology is simply the study of the timing of events in the annual cycles of plants and animals. All the great natural historians (Aristotle, Darwin, van Humboldt, Carson, Thoreau, Huxley, Linnaeus, Wren, Audubon, Skutch) kept this kind of data. They recorded when birds arrived or left on their migrations, when flowers bloomed, when the leaves fell, when ice formed and broke up. Aldo Leopold, one of my personal heroes, was famous for keeping detailed records of all the comings and goings that took place at his farm in the Sand Counties of Wisconsin. These records are now being continued by his daughter, and they form an incredibly detailed record of a wide variety of events. Other groups also collect phenology data; for example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been compiling weather data for more than a century. Collections of these types of data sets have been vital to the measurement of global climate change. Only from having long standing and continuous records of when the first individuals of particular species of birds arrived in spring or when the first snows fell in the mountains can we observe and track the slowly changing variations that are occurring on a planet wide scale around us.
To add to this endeavor in some small way, I will be tracking the occurrence of events in Central California. I am not even attempting to track every possible natural history event. When weather, animals, plants and fungi are all considered, it is clear that this would be impossible. Instead, my hope is to track some significant events from season to season and year to year, and to add more and more such events as time goes on.
My calendar can be found under one of the tabs on my blog’s homepage and also at:
abirdingnaturalist 
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