Anyone who’s contemplated keeping a nature journal knows the paralysis of structuring a blank book. Here, a dozen field scientists open their notebooks and give you a peek. There are George Schaller’s pages from the Serengeti lions and the pandas in Sichuan. Bernd Heinrich on ravens in the Maine woods. Kenn Kaufman’s lists from the year he hitchhiked the country chasing birds at nineteen. Anna Behrensmeyer on reading fossil beds, Jonathan Kingdon on drawing African mammals, Piotr Naskrecki on photographing insects nobody has named. Michael Canfield edited it, E.O. Wilson wrote the foreword, and the big payoff is the reproductions: eighty-seven color plates of actual pages, coffee-stained, cross-hatched, scrawled in the rain.
Field Notes on Science and Nature