May Nature Journaling: How To Notice The Full Choir
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May is the month that nature journallers talk about in slightly hushed, reverent tones. It’s the one where everything comes together at once. The migrants are all here. The trees are in full leaf. The wildflowers are rioting. The insects are everywhere. And the dawn chorus, on a good morning, is so layered and complex and extraordinary that it can stop you completely in your tracks.
I’ll be honest. May can also feel a bit intimidating if you’re trying to keep a journal. There’s so much to notice that it’s easy to feel like you’re constantly behind. Like you’re missing things. Like the month is running away from you before you’ve had a chance to see it properly.
So this month, I want to talk about slowing down even when the world is speeding up. About listening as well as looking. And about finding your own particular corner of May to pay attention to, rather than trying to catch all of it.
May Morning and the Old Traditions
There’s a long tradition in the British Isles of going out on May morning. May 1st, Beltane, the old Celtic fire festival marking the beginning of summer. People would wash their faces in the morning dew, gather hawthorn blossom, and bring the outside in. In Oxford, the Magdalen College choir still sings from the top of the tower at 6 am on May morning, and crowds gather on the bridge below to listen.
I mention this not because you need to travel to Oxford, but because these traditions exist for a reason. Humans have always felt the pull of early May. The impulse to go outside at dawn and mark the turning of the season is ancient and cross-cultural. In many parts of Europe, May Day traditions involve flowers, greenery, and dancing. In Japan, the cherry blossom season, which reaches many northern regions in May, is celebrated with hanami, the practice of sitting beneath the blossoms and appreciating their brief beauty.
Your nature journal is part of that same impulse. The desire to pay attention to this moment. To say: I was here, and I noticed.
If you want to try a May morning ritual of your own, go outside as early as you can on any morning this month. Before the traffic starts. Before your phone demands your attention. Take your journal and write whatever you find. The dew on the grass. The birds. The quality of the early light. It will set you up for the whole day differently.
What to Look and Listen For in May
The list is genuinely long this month, so I’ll focus on the things I find most worth seeking out.
The full dawn chorus.
We’ve been building towards this since February. By early May, every resident and migrant bird is singing at full volume. The complexity is remarkable. In the UK, you might hear blackbird, song thrush, robin, wren, chiffchaff, blackcap, whitethroat, willow warbler, and many more, all overlapping in the pre-dawn dark. In North America, the equivalent experience is available in almost any woodland or park. The Merlin Bird ID app is still your best friend here for identifying what you’re hearing in real time.
Swift arrival
Swifts typically arrive in the UK in late April to early May, and their arrival is one of the most emotional moments in the naturalist’s calendar. They spend almost their entire lives airborne. They eat, sleep, and mate on the wing. When they scream overhead on a warm May evening, it feels like a signal that summer has properly begun. Note the exact date you first hear them. In the US, chimney swifts play a similar role, and their arrival is equally worth marking.
Hawthorn blossom
May is sometimes called the Hawthorn month. The hedgerows turn white with it, and the smell is heavy, sweet, and slightly strange. It’s one of the most important plants in the British landscape for wildlife. Look closely at a hawthorn in flower, and you’ll find it busy with insects. The Hawthorn Society doesn’t exist, but the Woodland Trust’s hawthorn page is a good starting point for learning more.
Orchids
May is the start of the UK orchid season. Early purple orchids are often already out in April, but common spotted orchids, green-winged orchids, and others follow in May. Finding your first wild orchid is a particular kind of thrill. The Hardy Orchid Society has information on where to look and what to look for. In North America, showy orchis, pink lady’s slippers, and yellow lady’s slippers are blooming in eastern woodlands through May.
Hedgerow life
May hedgerows are extraordinarily rich habitats. Look for nesting birds, feeding insects, and the tangle of plants competing for light. The elder is coming into bud. Cow parsley is frothing along roadsides. If you can find a good stretch of hedgerow to visit regularly through the month, it will reward you enormously.
Pond life
Tadpoles are growing fast now. Damselflies and dragonflies are beginning to emerge from their aquatic larval stage. On warm afternoons, a sunny pond is one of the most productive places to sit and observe. Take your time. Watch the surface and the margins. There’s usually far more happening than you notice at first glance.
The Art of Listening
I want to spend a bit of time on this because I think it gets overlooked. Most nature journaling guidance focuses on what you see. But May is, above almost any other month, a month of sound. And training yourself to really listen, to pay the same kind of attention to sound that you give to sight, opens up a completely different layer of experience.
Try this. Find somewhere to sit outside and close your eyes. Spend five minutes just listening. Not trying to identify anything. Just receiving. Notice the direction the sounds come from, the layers, the close sounds and the distant ones. Notice the silences between.
Then open your eyes and write about what you heard. Not a list. A description. As if you were describing it to someone who couldn’t hear.
This kind of sensory attention is at the heart of what nature journaling, at its best, seeks to cultivate. The naturalist and writer Robert Macfarlane writes beautifully about this kind of deep attention in his book The Wild Places and in Landmarks, which explores the language we use to describe the natural world. Both are worth reading if you haven’t already.
For a more practical guide to sound in nature, the Wildlife Sound Recording Society is a fascinating rabbit hole if you find yourself wanting to go further.
On Not Trying to See Everything
Here’s something I’ve been sitting with this month. In April, I encouraged you to follow one thread carefully rather than trying to catch everything. In May, I want to reinforce that even more strongly, because the pressure to see it all intensifies.
Experienced naturalists often talk about having a “patch.” A local place they visit repeatedly, building up a detailed picture over months and years rather than chasing rarities across the country. The depth of knowledge that comes from really knowing one small place is something that casual wildlife tourism can never replicate.
If you don’t have a patch yet, May is a perfect time to choose one. It doesn’t need to be spectacular. A local park, a bit of canal towpath, a churchyard, a corner of a field. Somewhere you can get to easily and visit often. Start recording what’s there now, in May, and keep going through the year. By next May, you’ll have something genuinely remarkable.
The concept of the local patch is explored beautifully in Mark Cocker’s writing, particularly in his book Our Place, which examines what we’ve lost in the British countryside and how paying attention to local nature is itself a form of resistance and renewal.
May Journalling Prompts
As ever, one is enough. Give it your full attention.
- Go outside before sunrise on one morning this week. Write your journal entry in real time as the dawn chorus builds. Note what you hear first, what comes next, and when the light changes.
- Sit near a flowering hawthorn or other blossom for fifteen minutes. Count every species of insect that visits. Write about what you find.
- Close your eyes, go somewhere outside, and spend five minutes just listening. Then write a description of what you heard as if you were describing it to someone who couldn’t hear.
- Find a pond or water body and visit it on three separate days this month. Note what changes between visits.
- Write about the smell of May. Not just what you can smell but what it reminds you of, what it makes you feel.
- Choose a patch. Somewhere local and accessible. Visit it this week and write a detailed description of everything you notice. Date it. This is your baseline for the year.
The Feeling of May
There’s something about May that feels almost unbearably generous. The days are long and warm. Everything is growing. The world smells extraordinary. And there’s a faint undertow of melancholy in it too, because you know it won’t last. The blossom falls. The dawn chorus will quiet down once the breeding season peaks. The Swifts will only be here for a few months.
I think that’s why paying attention in May matters so much. Not despite its fleeting quality, but because of it. The journal doesn’t stop things from passing. But it lets you be present while they’re here. And later, in the darker months, you can go back and read what you wrote on a warm May morning, and find that it’s all still there.
That’s a pretty good reason to keep a journal, I think.
Next month: June, midsummer light, and the strange business of things being at their peak just as they start to turn.
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