Nesting Season, Bernd Heinrich

Heinrich has some of the most intriguing and complex natural history books on the market.  From his personal insights to his search of literature he does not attack a subject without being exhaustive.  As a result the pages are densely packed with information, encyclopedic in content, and tough reading. 

I could only read 3 – 5 pages at a time.  To read more would be to skim and miss the details that are in every chapter.  No skim reading for this book or else don’t bother reading it.  To absorb is to take your time, reflect and make your own observations.

This book came from friends Ruth and John who took to reading the book over their own area nesting season – a wonderful and clever idea to add depth to the reading.  Bernd lives in Vermont and teaches college students to observe and think about the wonders of nature.  We need more people like him.

Harvard Press has this to say about the book:  “Why are the eggs of the marsh wren deep brown, the winter wren’s nearly white, and the gray catbird’s a brilliant blue? And what in the DNA of a penduline tit makes the male weave a domed nest of fibers and the female line it with feathers, while the bird-of-paradise male builds no nest at all, and his bower-bird counterpart constructs an elaborate dwelling?

“These are typical questions that Bernd Heinrich pursues in the engaging style we’ve come to expect from him—supplemented here with his own stunning photographs and original watercolors. One of the world’s great naturalists and nature writers, Heinrich shows us how the sensual beauty of birds can open our eyes to a hidden evolutionary process. Nesting, as Heinrich explores it here, encompasses what fascinates us most about birds—from their delightful songs and spectacular displays to their varied eggs and colorful plumage; from their sex roles and mating rituals to nest parasitism, infanticide, and predation.

“What moves birds to mate and parent their young in so many different ways is what interests Heinrich—and his insights into the nesting behavior of birds has more than a little to say about our own.”

The quotes below contain a few tidbits that I thought were fun.

“One of the strong interests that we have in other animals (as we also have in one another) is not just what they do.  We also want to know why they (and we) do it.  For that we need to learn what drives them to behave as they do.  However, despite our own huge emphasis on feelings or emotions in trying to understand ourselves, the topic has been practically taboo in the considerations of other animals, for whom instead we categorically presume that we cannot know what they feel.  However, a more conservative approach is that feelings of love and attachment, despite their imponderable quantities, are universal attributes of other vertebrate animals, just as our physical construction is virtually identical to theirs, except for the minor exterior adaptations to our differing physical environments.  By invoking Occam’s razor it would be a greater error to presume that animals are not driven by geelings than to suppose that they are.  Instead, currently we seem to have decided that humans are exempt from the rules that obtain across the rest of nature, and that sophisticated emotions are our exclusive province.”

“Satellite tracking has revealed that albatrosses may cover 184000 km of travel in their first year of life, and then they may wander another seven to fifteen years before breeding.”

“Anna and Pavil, built a nest and mated in January 1968 and they continued to nest annually until they had produced seventy six young by 1987 when someone apparently stole Anna.  The zoo then provided Pavil with another femail from the Krakow Xoo.  He immediately attacked her.  Three months later a weakened raven was found walking about in Warsaw, and since she reacted when addressed by the name Anna, this bird was brought to Pavil.  The two greeted each other wildly and with obvious pleasure.  They reunited immediately and produced one more clutch of young before dying of apparent old age.”

“A male spotted sandpiper’s evolved willingness to incubate eggs should be contingent on his assurance of paternity.  However, male paternity is never assured and females may not need to be choosy in a partner, so long as he will incubate her eggs.  A female appears to placate a potential mate by copulating with him frequently, which would increase his chances of paternity and hence make him willing to incubate the eggs and then lead the young around.”

“Crossbills nesting in winter while feeding on spruce and larch seeds and the goldfinches breeding in August when the thistles come into seed are exceptions to the rule of spring being most bird’s breeding time.”

“The steps of the cranes’ dance performance, like any dance of ours, are set by convention and are probably honed to perfection by maturation and by practice.  If there were no strict convention, there could be no perfection.”

“Snowy owls, for example, attach Arctic foxes that threaten their nests, and snow geese gain protection by nesting near them.”

“The common (European) swift has, like all the other eighty five to ninety species of swifts, achieved the ultimate perfect in of life on the wing in open skies.  The two young from a clutch of this small bird with long narrow pointed wings spend about six weeks in the nest and leave it about fifteen minutes after sundown, apparently to avoid falcons.  From that moment on the young’s ties with their parents are broken forever, and they ascend into the sky to 2000 to 3000 m in altitude to meet up with others, staying continuously and uninterruptedly airborne for two to three years.”