![]() The Idea: Bernd Heinrich’s new book will change the way you look at nature. I‘ve written about several of biologist Bernd Heinrich‘s books before, notably Mind of the Raven, Winter World and Why We Run. His latest book The Geese of Beaver Bog is less scientific than these previous works, more of a personal memoir, or even a love story. It is the anecdotal record of four years observing the Canada Geese in the bog system near his Vermont home. With painstaking effort, Heinrich learned to recognize goose individuals by their facial markings, and then by their behaviours. This began inadvertently when he suddenly became the step-parent of Peep, a gosling that had been hatched by the penned geese of Heinrich’s neighbour. It continued for four years as each year Peep returned ‘home’ to Beaver Bog, and introduced and acclimatized Heinrich to more of the geese in her ‘flock’. I won’t spoil the heart-warming and astonishing end of the story. What I want to do in this article is tell you some of the remarkable learnings and discoveries that Heinrich made by observing Peep and her ‘family’.
All of these behaviours, encoded in goose DNA, are selected for in evolutionary terms to ensure the safety, survival, and success of the species as a whole, and sustain the balance and integrity of the multiple ecosystems of which they are a part. We have much to learn from them. The community in which I live has three regular ‘superfamily’ sites where a few weeks from now we will again see these noisy and adorable communities, who are so accustomed to our community that they know we will stop our cars and wait for the long waddling rows to cross the road in front of us, and who have no fear of us or our dogs. I’m on my way outside now to check out a prime nesting site (an island on ‘our’ pond). |
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Very interesting post! I so admire Bernd Heinrich and his ability to make the natural world so interesting to even the most dis-interested, and to do so without being overly clinical or romantic, all while expressing his obvious love for nature’s intricacies. I’ve just finished ‘A Year In the Maine Woods’ and look forward to this one.
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