One Wild Bird at a Time: Portraits of Individual Lives
by Bernd Heinrich
From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:
In his modern classics One Man’s Owl and Mind of the Raven, Bernd Heinrich has written memorably about his relationships with wild ravens and a great horned owl.
In One Wild Bird at a Time, Heinrich returns to his great love: close, day-to-day observations of individual wild birds. There are countless books on bird behavior, but Heinrich argues that some of the most amazing bird behaviors fall below the radar of what most birds do in aggregate. Heinrich’s “passionate observations [that] superbly mix memoir and science” (New York Times Book Review) lead to fascinating questions — and sometimes startling discoveries. A great crested flycatcher, while bringing food to the young in their nest, is attacked by the other flycatcher nearby. Why? A pair of Northern flickers hammering their nest-hole into the side of Heinrich’s cabin deliver the opportunity to observe the feeding competition between siblings, and to make a related discovery about nest-cleaning. One of a clutch of redstart warbler babies fledges out of the nest from twenty feet above the ground, and lands on the grass below. It can’t fly. What will happen next?
Can I make a confession, at the risk of losing any and all credibility? I’ve never read a Bernd Heinrich book. Oh, I have several on my shelves; I just haven’t gotten around to reading them. But this one I’m making time for. I’m only a couple chapters into it, but already have realized that I absolutely have to go back and read his other works as well. Heinrich’s observations of these particular, individual birds are fascinating, and a nice counterpoint to just about every other bird book out there.
One Wild Bird at a Time: Portraits of Individual Lives
by Bernd Heinrich
Hardcover; 224 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; April 12, 2016
ISBN: 9780544387638
$28.00
Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)
Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)
Posted by Grant McCreary on April 24th, 2016.
Comment