Pheno-time dictionary: Call for phenology recorders to share notes on their experiences

If you have been recording phenology, you have probably come across or noticed things that do not perhaps always fit into the recording sheets. Pheno-time dictionary invites you to share your thoughts, noticings, stories, concerns on phenological changes on a collaborative board, to open discussion on what can be experienced through first-hand interactions with phenology.

Phenology and the close attention to plant and animal timings can help us to connect locally with global processes of change and notice happenings that may, to the untrained eye, seem completely ordinary. Yet, timing changes in the environment are complex, always unfolding and changing with and around us. We might hear from scientists speaking of early or late arrivals of some birds and its impact to ecosystems. Then a few years later we get counter-articles saying the species are in fact adapting better than hoped, e.g. like the case with fly catchers. Regardless of whether we have definite answers, the awareness of nature’s doings and looking out for plant and animal activity is immensely important for valuing, respecting and including other beings (e.g. in the future infrastructures).

Therefore, this mini-project invites phenology recorders to chime in with their own experiences in the field. What have you noticed? Late arrivals? Delays? Surprise visits? Absences? Any changing habits of plants and animals? (e.g. more nocturnal lifestyles)

To participate and share your stories, this project invites you to engage with a collaborative board (Google Jamboard, see below for a link) to respond to a number of concepts related to phenology, time and change. You can choose how you might want to do this, you can be poetic, or you can add keywords, or tell a story, or add images. It is up to you, what you want to contribute!  The initial set of concepts have been chosen with biological scientists but there is an invitation for you to leave your own concepts for others to think about.

The intention of the project is to assemble a collaborative dictionary of phenological time and change as experienced by phenology recorders. This will eventually be developed into a collaborative resource later on to be shared publicly so that people who might have not come across phenology before, can engage with different stories and be inspired to observe nature’s timings too. So if you are keen to have your experiences included (anonymously or not, your choice) do take part. 

To receive the link to the board, please send a simple email of “I would like the link to Pheno-Time dictionary” to k.koppel@sms.ed.ac.uk.

This project is part of the Temporal Ecologies PhD project on humanities engagement with phenology, you can read more about here.