Base camp: the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
Our first stop is the University of California, Berkeley, where the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology opened in 1908 with the biologist Joseph Grinnell as its first director. Grinnell wanted field notes that someone could use a hundred years later — and he got his wish. In the 2000s, researchers on the Grinnell Resurvey Project returned to his old Californian sites, using his notes to measure how animal ranges had shifted over a century.
What made those notes reusable was a system. Grinnell asked his collectors to keep a field notebook for quick jottings, then transfer the material each evening into three structured records: a journal (a daily narrative with route, weather and habitat), species accounts (all observations of a given species gathered together) and a catalogue (a numbered list of every specimen collected). Each record points to the others.
The non-negotiable header
Whatever system you use, every entry should open with the same few facts: the full date, the precise location, the time, the weather and who was present. Grinnell's collectors wrote locality descriptions so specific — distances from named landmarks, elevations, habitat — that later scientists could stand in the same spot. Today a GPS coordinate helps, but a written description still matters, because place names and devices change.
Writing what you see, not what you expect
Our second landmark is Gombe Stream in Tanzania, where Jane Goodall began observing chimpanzees in 1960. Her early notes recorded behaviour in detail — including chimpanzees stripping twigs to fish for termites, an observation that challenged the idea that only humans made tools. Goodall's practice shows the value of describing behaviour plainly before interpreting it. "Adult male inserts grass stem into termite mound, withdraws, eats insects" is evidence. "Clever chimp" is an opinion.
Sketches, counts and lists
Methodical observers mix formats. Quick sketches capture a bird's wing pattern faster than words. Tallies record herd sizes. Lists let you scan a day at a glance. A good page is not prose alone; it is a toolkit. Many naturalists leave the left-hand page for sketches and maps and use the right for notes.
Materials that survive
Methods depend on materials. Graphite pencil remains the field favourite because it does not run in rain. Waterproof notebooks such as those sold by Rite in the Rain, made in Tacoma, Washington, are popular with field biologists and surveyors. Archival-quality pigment ink is a fine option at camp. Avoid felt-tips and gel pens that bleed, and never rely solely on a phone: batteries die, and file formats age faster than paper.
From notebook to dataset
Modern biology has turned the old ideals into shared standards. Darwin Core, ratified by the Biodiversity Information Standards organisation (TDWG) in 2009, defines common terms — what was seen, where, when, by whom — so that observations from different notebooks and museums can be combined. If your notes answer those questions, they can, in principle, become useful data.
A simple method to steal
Carry a pocket notebook for the moment. Each evening, rewrite into a fuller journal with a standard header. Keep a running species list at the back. Number your pages and index them when a notebook is full. That's the Grinnell spirit, pared down for a traveller.
Dispatch timeline
- 1908Museum of Vertebrate Zoology opens at Berkeley under Joseph Grinnell.
- Early 1900sThe Grinnell system of journal, species accounts and catalogue takes shape.
- 1960Jane Goodall begins her field notes at Gombe Stream.
- 2009The Darwin Core standard is ratified by TDWG.