birdwatching log... without my location?!

[fairyrune]

good timezone, everyone! 

i'm sort of a novice birdwatcher. i consider myself a novice as i've never really dedicated time to going out specifically to see birds; i mostly spot birds in my garden, and the rare occasion that i travel. but birdwatching has always been a big interest of mine and i'd like to expand my horizons, and also share my journey with the world!

i really like ratwalks' log, birdwatching.zone and birdtreeland's life list; all three have been inspirations for me regarding this particular project of mine. in particular, i like the idea of having facts about the birds you see, pictures of them (no matter how shoddy!) and their scientific names, perhaps a translation of the name too. location is also important... i think i'll have a small, pop-out log (description tag?) with the dates and time/weather/location info for when i saw them, but that's where i'm stuck.

i don't want to reveal my exact location, especially as i'll be sticking close to home to begin with!

so... how would you go about this? i have two ideas:

idea 1: i describe the environment. the biome, the geographical features (beach, cliffside, deciduous forest, etc.), the weather...

idea 2, more abstract: i assign each entry emojis. for funsies.

i think idea 1 is more informative, but do any of you have any suggestions here?

[Melooon]

My suggestion would be giving real locations new names, then keeping a key of what location = what name. That way in the future if you have moved and want to make the location information public for archival reasons, you can simply convert it, or publish the key. It also means if you develop local bird watching friends you can share the key with them so they can keep track of the actual locations by following the site. 

I'd still do a bit of option 1 as well, since that's helpful for people who are never going to visit that location and wont know its features!

[fairyrune]

My suggestion would be giving real locations new names, then keeping a key of what location = what name. [...] It also means if you develop local bird watching friends you can share the key with them so they can keep track of the actual locations by following the site. 

that's a very good point, melon! sort of like how locations work on sites like ebird; the location is known, but you can name it for convenience. of course, only the name would be public like this! it also brings to mind what3words, but that's an actual code that anyone can access.

i could get quite creative with the names, too. that would be nice! and it would mean that for me, i can understand what i mean by this place and that place, without having to go reference an offline log with the real locations. thanks for the suggestion, i think i'll try it!