Geese of Beaver Bog

Heinrich became a sort of honorary Canada goose, spending long hours in all weather with the birds that inhabited a bog near his Vermont home. The geese decided Heinrich could be trusted and allowed him to watch and record their daily routines—as complex and dramatic as any human soap opera—from up close. Heinrich is a biologist (U. of Vermont), but he stresses that his focus here is not hard science but the history, relationships, and actions of individual birds. He's the award- winning author of several other volumes of science writing, including Winter World, Mind of the Raven, and Bumblebee Economics. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Publishers Weekly

Arguably today's finest naturalist author, Heinrich follows up his magnificent Winter World (2003) with a smaller-scale but delightful narrative of his recent observations on the Canadian geese that have colonized the beaver bog near his Vermont home. The story begins and ends with Peep, a goose who hatched from an egg on Heinrich's lawn and adopted Heinrich's family as her own. In time Peep mates with a gander, Pop, only to see all her eggs but one destroyed by an unknown predator Heinrich suspects other geese and then her sole gosling die, as she and Pop share the bog with another goose couple whom Heinrich calls Jane and Jack. The next year, Pop has coupled with Jane, while Peep, after some struggle, takes up with Jack, contradicting the common wisdom that geese pair off for years, just one of many anomalous behaviors that Heinrich observes and tries to make sense of. Other geese come and go, as Heinrich rushes from his house to the bog, often before dawn, scrupulously studying this incident or that, always tying in what he sees with scientific knowledge, relying particularly on Konrad Lorenz's groundbreaking work. The story can flag at times (these are geese, after all, not higher primates), but is always re-energized by Heinrich's enthusiasm. Other animals figure in as well other bird species, beavers, mammalian predators and even the author's own family as the seasons turn and the geese grow, in Heinrich's talented hands, into memorable characters. Backed by several useful appendixes and brightened not only by Heinrich's careful drawings but by color photos (not seen by PW), this is another worthy missive from our latter-day Thoreau. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Bernd Heinrich is the author of numerous award-winning books, including the bestselling Winter World, Mind of the Raven, and Why We Run, and has received countless honors for his scientific work. He also writes for Scientific American, Outside, American Scientist, and Audubon, and has published book reviews and op-eds for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He studied at the University of Maine and UCLA, and is professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont. Heinrich divides his time between Vermont and the forests of western Maine.