CBR16 BINGO: Earth Day, because it’s about observing birds and nature
BINGO (diagonal): Bananas, Cult, Dreams, Earth Day, Rings
Bernd Heinrich is a biologist/naturalist/professor who has written numerous books about birds and bird behavior. I’ve read some of his other books and found them to be a little dense, but he is clearly an expert in the field and an avid bird lover. In One Wild Bird at a Time, he encourage his readers to conduct their own experiments by closely observing the world around them. In his introduction, he emphasizes the importance of entering the worlds of other creatures through knowledge, which then leads to empathy. “When getting to know a bird–by learning where it lives, what it eats, how it forages, where and how it nests, what it fears, and in general what it likes and dislikes–we are entering another world. Each animal gives us a new view, a new experience, that involves stepping out of our own world into another, and it is always an adventure.”
The book comprises 17 chapters (each one about a different species) in which Heinrich details his encounters with specific birds or groups of birds that have lived in or visited his home in the woods of Maine. Some of these encounters span multiple years, and he references the detailed notes he’s assembled over time. He also includes his own charming sketches of the birds that he’s observed–this is nature journaling at its best!
My favorite entry is the first chapter, where he describes how he observed Norther flickers tapping a hole in his cabin wall in an attempt to build a nest. Realizing that, if the flickers did make it through the first layer of wood, they would meet with a long gap of empty space with nowhere to place the nest, Heinrich modified the wall from the inside to build a little ledge for the birds. That’s dedication, but he really wanted those flickers to stay! Nest they did, and they hatched chicks in his wall. After a few additional modifications to his space, he was able to closely observe the babies as they grew and eventually fledged. I enjoyed this section because how can you not love someone who cuts holes in his own walls so that he can watch baby birds? His observations are sometimes sweet, as he describes the noises the baby birds make as “Just like you’d expect baby pterodactyls to sound, only cuter.”
Not all of the chapters are as cute or accessible as this one. There are times where he describes in great detail the quantity and measurement of scat in a nest, which is tedious for all but the most hardened scientists. Also, readers be warned, not all stories have happy endings. This is nature, and sometimes the male won’t find a mate; other times, parents will work hard to build a nest and rear chicks only to have them taken by a predator overnight.
Additionally, I wasn’t always comfortable with the way Heinrich inserts himself into nature. On a couple of occasions he describes temporarily capturing birds as part of a simple experiment, and in one case he picks up a baby bird to get a reaction from the parent (note, bird parents will not reject babies that people have touched–that is a myth). Researchers do this kind of thing all the time and I’m ok with it, but this book is supposed to be encouraging individuals to observe and study the world around them. I would hate to think a casual reader would think it’s ok to pick up baby birds.
Overall, Heinrich’s approach to the world is admirable. He observes something unusual and notes, “This was a puzzle, and I had an opportunity to solve it.” When he encounters a puzzle, he designs a way to test hypotheses through observation. Sometimes that involves heating up a dead shrew he’s found in the woods and leaving it out for a barred owl to see how the owl reacts (his informal experiment suggests that owls are motivated by movement rather than body heat). Sometimes it means counting pieces of scat. The point he is trying to make is that, when you encounter something in nature that makes you go, “hmm,” there are often simple steps you can take to find more information. Embrace your curiosity!
In short, this book has a wonderful message, although at times it gets a bit too in the weeds for the casual nature lover. I could have done with a couple of essays that made the same point about observational science in place of a full-length book.
One more item I must share: The last chapter is about the American woodcock, which does a curious “swaying dance walk” that has led to much speculation. Heinrich has his own hypotheses about why the woodcocks dance. Personally, I don’t care whether we ever crack that puzzle, as long as I can keep coming back to this video. Seriously, it never gets old.