Reviewing Waterproof Notebooks for Field Notes

Why the Lakeside Is the Ultimate Test for a Notebook

Half seven on the bank of a lowland mere, a light drizzle drifting across the water, a lingering mist, and forty-odd gadwall to count before they drift behind the reeds. It is exactly the moment you reach for a notebook, and exactly the moment a notebook gives up on you. Damp trouser pockets, wet hands, a hide bench that has been rained on since Tuesday, and the odd spot of mud where you slipped on the approach path — that is the working environment for field notes in Britain.

Wet paper is not merely an inconvenience. Ink bleeds, pages weld themselves together, pencil lifts off in a grey smear, and by the time you get home you are left guessing whether you recorded fourteen or forty. Over the past few weeks I have been carrying four different approaches to a handful of reservoirs, gravel pits and one gloriously muddy lake, and subjecting each of them to the same treatment. Here is what survived.

What I Took to the Water’s Edge

• Stone-paper pad (A6). Pages made from calcium carbonate bound with a polymer. Completely waterproof, very hard to tear, and smooth as a pebble.
• Synthetic-sheet field book (A5). Polypropylene pages on a plastic wire spiral. Fully soakable, slightly slick under the pencil.
• Coated all-weather notebook (A6). The beige, faintly textured classic, with a treated page that takes pencil beautifully.
• Laminated record cards and a chinagraph pencil. The cheap option: two cards in a plastic sleeve, plus a grease pencil borrowed from the ringing kit.

Each went into a different pocket so I could not muddle them, and each was used for real records rather than nonsense scribbles — counts, plumage notes, times, and the direction birds moved along the shore.

The Soak Test, Minute by Minute

I wanted conditions that anyone would meet on an ordinary morning out, not a laboratory. The routine was the same at every site:

• Drizzle, fifteen minutes. Notebook left open and flat on a wet hide ledge while I counted wildfowl through the scope.
• Immersion, thirty seconds. Dropped into about fifteen centimetres of water at the edge, then shaken off and used straight away.
• Pocket carry, two hours. Stuffed into a damp trouser pocket next to a wet cloth, then written in on a windy bank.
• Muddy fingers. After a slippery descent to the waterline, notes taken with hands I would not have wanted on a camera.
• Drying. Left flat on a radiator overnight, which is where a lot of field notebooks quietly ruin themselves.

How the Pages Actually Behaved

The stone-paper pad was untroubled by everything. Rain sat on the surface in beads, mud wiped off with a thumb, and after the immersion test I simply shook it and carried on. Its only real failing is the surface itself — so smooth that a hard pencil skates and a soft one fills in faint grey, so ballpoint is the sensible partner. It also refuses to absorb, which means a wet page will smudge against your sleeve while you write.

The synthetic-sheet book was similarly indifferent to water, and its spiral binding did not rust, unlike the metal-spiralled pad I tried last winter, which left orange freckles across every page. Pencil took reasonably well once I switched to a 2B, and the slightly larger A5 format was a genuine advantage when writing a species list standing up.

The coated notebook was the nicest to write in and the most pleasant to hold, with a page that feels like paper rather than plastic. It shrugged off drizzle and a muddy thumb, and survived its brief dunking without the pages sticking together once I dried it flat. Leave it crumpled in a rucksack, though, and it will cockle.

The laminated cards never failed, because card cannot fail. But a chinagraph is blunt, your handwriting becomes enormous, and you can fit about thirty records on two cards before you are hunting for more.

Pens, Pencils and Muddy Fingers

The notebook is only half the kit. The instrument matters just as much:

• Ballpoint is the most reliable all-rounder on stone paper and synthetics, and keeps working on a wet page.
• HB or 2B pencil is unbeatable on coated and synthetic sheets, and the marks do not run when the page is soaked. Carry a soft one and a sharpener.
• Water-based ink and most gel pens are hopeless. One drop and your careful count of tufted duck becomes an impressionist wash.
• Permanent marker works, but it can strike through and bleed.
• Chinagraph is the traditional answer for laminated cards in truly foul weather.

Muddy fingers are less of a problem than you would think, provided the page is non-porous. Mud wipes off stone paper and synthetics cleanly; on coated paper it smears and needs to dry before you brush it away, so write around it rather than over it.

What I’d Carry Tomorrow

For everyday lakeside birding in Britain, a small coated all-weather pad in a chest pocket, with a 2B pencil on a string, covers almost everything. If you are planning a long count in steady rain, or you know you will be wading, take the stone-paper or synthetic book instead and accept that you will be writing in ballpoint.

Two small habits make more difference than the paper: keep the notebook flat against your thigh rather than balanced on a wet rail, and never leave it closed and soaking in a warm car, because that is when pages stick. Keep the record dry enough to read, and the morning’s sightings stay yours.