My choice would be my notebooks. In the back room, I have sixteen dating back to 1985 from my birding around the UK. For foreign trips I have pushed the boat out and used one per trip. Optics, despite the short-term pain of being Swarowski-less, are replaceable. You can't replace 27 years of hand-written memories. I really should buy a fire-proof box.
I am green with envy, when I see fabulous illustrations like @stewchat produced of the Ivory Gull in the north-east recently. I am not an artist and without a camera, I often wonder how I would cope making sketches of scarce or rare birds, but so long as I can write, those memories are there to be brought back to life.
Take this one here...
This is page from a ten-day trip to Iceland in April 2004 when I helped out the Operation Godwit team with their ringing mission. I wasn't much help, we only caught 12 Black-tailed Godwits, but we did see plenty of colour-ringed birds, included on the 20th - Lime/Yellow:Yellow/White.
Today I was down at Mistley Walls on the Stour Estuary and guess who I saw?
Four months short of ten years since pencil met paper and he is still going strong. He was ringed as an adult in 1998 on The Wash so he is at least seventeen years old. He has been seen on the Stour almost without out fail, spring and autumn, since 2003. What really hits home, is the clear demonstration of how important the estuary is for him and his fellow godwits.
I have a smartphone, digital camera, laptop, access to tablet (who doesn't), but it would pain me to stop using a notebook and pencil. As an old friend once said, the bluntest one is better than the sharpest mind.
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