JAN CANNON FILMS

SELECTED BOOKS

 

Bernd Heinrich is the author of numerous books, including the highly praised The Snoring Bird, the bestselling Winter World, the award-winning Mind of the Raven, The Geese of Beaver Bog, Why We Run, The Trees in My Forest, A Year in the Maine Woods, Ravens in Winter, One Man’s Owl, and Bumblebee Economics, which was nominated for the National Book Award. 

The Snoring Bird, HarperCollins, 2007

 

 Publishers Weekly
"Arguably today’s finest naturalist author...our latter-day Thoreau." 

 

Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse
"...beautifully written story of a man’s efforts to reconstruct posthumously the life of his father..." 

Wolfgang W.E. Samuel, author of German Boy and The War of Our Childhood
"...You will not want to put it down...an engrossing and powerful narrative of human achievement..." 

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy
"...amazing saga, full of twists and turns...his magnum opus...vividly descriptive...he has produced his best book ever..." 

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, anthropologist and author of the bestseller The Hidden Life of Dogs
"...I couldn’t leave its pages...it has joined the small collection of my most favorite book..." 

Jean Craighead George, award-winning author of Julie of the Wolves
"...extraordinary...a memoir of fun, daringness and intellectual curiosity, the heartwarming evolution of a modern biologist." 

Thomas Eisner, professor of chemical ecology, Cornell University
"...by one of the premier naturalists of our time...a splendid book, truly compelling, and bound to endure." 

Los Angeles Times Book Review
"The Snoring Bird...show[s] readers why the work of an observant field biologist still matters." 

New York Times Book Review
"Some of Heinrich’s most lyrical writing...the future scientist as a footloose nature boy."  

 

The Geese of Beaver Bog, HarperCollins, 2004

Publishers Weekly
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. 

Booklist
Heinrich, naturalist and author of Winter World (2003) and Mind of the Raven (1999), raised a baby Canada goose to adulthood, at which point she flew south with her compatriots. Two years later, she returned with a mate in tow and set up housekeeping on a beaver pond near the author's house. The trust that Peep, Heinrich's goose, showed for the author allowed him to intimately observe the details of the pair's lives. The author describes battles over real estate, mate swapping, and the tender attentions of parents to new goslings. The other denizens of the marsh also get their due, as Heinrich discovers the nests of song sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, and rose-breasted grosbeaks. Underlying the engaging, personal nature of the narrative is Heinrich's scientific background, and the reader learns quite a bit about marsh biology and goose behavior between the lines. Sprinkled throughout are the author's lively sketches of the geese.

Winter World, HarperCollins, 2003

Scientific American
There cannot be many people who have gone into a beavers' lodge. Heinrich, professor of biology at the University of Vermont, did that in his quest to see how animals survive winter. It was a summer when the pond had dried up and the beavers were not in residence, but with a flashlight and room enough to turn around, Heinrich was able to conclude that the accommodation would be quite cozy for a beaver family in winter. Similarly trying to see for himself as much as possible, he describes the winter survival strategies of many animals. He marvels in particular at the success of the golden-crowned kinglet (Regulus satrapa), a bird "scarcely larger than a ruby-throated hummingbird" that remains active all through the winters of Maine and Alaska, its life "played out on the anvil of ice and under the hammer of deprivation." The kinglet, he says, symbolizes the "astounding and ingenious strategies that animals have evolved for coping in the winter world."

Booklist
The ways animals cope during cold winter months are highlighted in this new title from Bernd Heinrich, the award-winning author of Mind of the Raven (1999), physiological ecologist, and professor at the University of Vermont. Some animals, such as voles, stay awake all winter in tunnels and grassy nests built under the snow. Other small mammals, such as chipmunks and ground squirrels, spend winter hibernating. Some insects supercool through chemicals in their blood that inhibit freezing, while others do the opposite and survive by promoting self-freezing. Many other animals remain active all winter and retire to warm nests or dens when not seeking food. Heinrich is a graceful writer, taking the reader along as he uncovers aggregations of wintering bugs, follows a weasel's tracks in the snow, or watches the tiny kinglets fluff their feathers for insulation as they search for wintering caterpillars. Liberally illustrated with the author's pencil drawings, this title will be sought out by fans of good nature writing. 

Mind of the Raven, HarperCollins, 1999

Publishers Weekly
In a book that demonstrates the rewards of caring and careful observation of the natural world, Heinrich (Ravens in Winter, etc.), a noted biologist, Guggenheim fellow and National Book Award nominee (for Bumblebee Economics, 1979), explores the question of raven intelligence through observation, experiment and personal experience. Although he has raised many ravens through the years (beginning with a tame pair that shared his apartment at UCLA in the 1960s), Heinrich focuses much of his attention on four nestlings he adopted from the Maine woods near his home. As he describes tending to the demanding babies, chopping up roadkill, cleaning up after them and enduring their noisy calls for food, readers will marvel at how much Heinrich knows and at how much joy he derives from acquiring that knowledge. As the birds mature Heinrich details how these and other ravens feed, nest, mate, play and establish a society with clear hierarchical levels. At its best, his writing is distinguished by infectious enthusiasm, a lighthearted style and often lyrical descriptions of the natural world. His powers of observation are impressive and his descriptions of how a raven puffs its feathers in a dominance display, of how a female calls for food from her mate, of the pecking order at a carcass are formidably precise. Toward the end of the book, Heinrich addresses the question implied by the title: To what degree can ravens be said to think? His answer: "I suspect that the great gulf or discontinuity that exists between us and all other animals is... ultimately less a matter of consciousness than of culture."

Library Journal
Heinrich's adventures with ravens are consistently interesting and illuminating, whether he's crouching for hours in cold rain to observe them, hauling animal carcasses into the woods to attract them, or visiting in the homes of their human companions. In 29 readable and richly illustrated chapters, he shares his own experiences with the birds as well as many anecdotes collected by observers from around the globe. He explores "the possibility of conscious choice" in these obviously intelligent but often baffling birds, and believes they owe much of their complexity to the fact that they have evolved in close association with dangerous carnivores-wolves and men. Looking at the common fear that ravens damage crops, Heinrich asserts they have been unjustly accused and persecuted by farmers, and he studies firsthand the relationship of ravens with Eskimo hunters. Sometimes the research just leads him from one mystery to another, but wherever his questions take him, the journey is always fascinating as the many layers of raven psychology are revealed. Perhaps best known on this continent for its "trickster" talents, the raven has been associated in Europe with divination, death, and the Norse god Odin. Heinrich's perspective, that of the scientist, is just as compelling for modern readers and does full justice to this bird's mythical reputation. A fine, entertaining book for general readers, as well as an excellent resource for those seeking meticulously gathered and documented scientific information.

The New York Times Book Review
Bernd Heinrich is no ordinary biologist. He's the sort who combines formidable scientific rigor with a sense of irony and an unslaked, boyish enthusiasm for his subject

Scientific American
The raven (Corvus corax) is the largest crow, weighing between 1,200 and 1,400 grams (about 2.5 pounds), compared with about 400 for a standard American crow. It has a long-standing reputation as one smart bird. Heinrich, professor of biology at the University of Vermont, has raised raven chicks in his home ("the world's worst roommate," he says), observed ravens in an aviary and spent a great deal of time watching the behavior of wild ravens. He admires the raven's intelligence and describes numerous examples of it. Among the behaviors he or others have seen are flying upside down, doing barrel rolls, using objects to displace gulls from nests and rocks in defending their own nests, and poking holes in the bottom of their nests on a hot day. He inclines to the view that such behaviors are conscious, thinking acts. But it is a cautious conclusion. "Extraordinary cleverness can often be explained by 'simpler' hypotheses," he says. "With ravens I'm no longer always sure of how to distinguish a simple from a more complex hypothesis, how to know whether all of the ravens' behavior is somehow complexly preprogrammed or whether they know or learn to know what they are doing." 

Booklist
The common raven, Corvus corax, is the world's largest crow, measuring from 22 to 27 inches long, and it can be found in much of North America. Heinrich, a University of Vermont biologist and illustrator, is the author of The Trees in My Forest, a homage to the rhythms of life in his 300-acre Maine forest, and Ravens in Winter. He has studied ravens at his Vermont home, at his Maine cabin, and as far away as the Arctic. Here, he writes about this highly intelligent bird's fascinating behavior, the result of his observations, experiments, and experiences (including raising young ravens to adulthood, giving them such names as Fuzz and Houdi). This is not a scholarly work but rather a fond tribute to these feathered creatures. 

Kirkus Reviews
Still wild about ravens after all these years, award-winning zoologist Heinrich (Univ. of Vermont; The Trees in My Forest, 1997, etc.) continues his investigations into the big crow's behavior. What makes ravens tick, or, if you prefer, quork? What fires their love of baubles, their delight in tomfoolery? Why have so many cultures portrayed the birds as creators and destroyers, prophets and clowns and tricksters? Are they sentient? Do they scheme? To what use do they put that sizable brain? Heinrich has shared a lot of forest time with ravens over the years, trying to gain perspective on these questions. He has come away with an admittedly incomplete if anecdotally rich picture of the bird, one that bears up the historical image of a canny creature that trumps our expectations. Here is a bird that willingly incubates eggs that are obviously not its own, the smart guy falling for the oldest parasitic trick in the book. Yet here is also a bird that can sit down at the table, to a nicely fatted calf, say, with wolves and golden eagles, animals that are known to serve raven when the calves are scarce. Heinrich freely shares the glimmerings of real understanding he has made much the same way as ravens share food finds (in apparent, and typical, anti-evolutionary spirit) including the exploratory/carnal fixation the raven has with bijouterie, and how many ravens it takes to fish the Yellowstone River for cutthroat. But when it comes to measuring the ravens' intelligence, Heinrich suggests it would be folly to do so in human terms: We are, in effect, culturally incomparable, and for all the seeming pleasure we take in one another's company, how the bird goes about interpreting the world remains closed to us, enigmatic and contradictory as ever. Left unsaid in this learned study is how many hours Heinrich sat motionless in the deep-space cold of a Maine winter to gather these observations. There lies the gauge of his enterprise, understanding, and passion.

 Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Bernd Heinrich is one of the finest living examples of that strange hybrid: the science writer. . . . No definition of God has ever made me feel as comfortable, small and important in the universe as Heinrich's insight into the mind of the raven." 

Tom Seeley, professor of biology, Cornell University
"I have read Bernd's book and find that it is captivating, for it sheds light not only on the mind of the raven, one of the most intelligent creatures in nature, but also on the mind of Bernd Heinrich, one of the most insightful and original biologists on earth." 

New York Times Book Review
"Heinrich has a rare ability to embed dense scientific explications within graceful, light-footed nature writing. . . . The mind of Bernd Heinrich is a big, antic thing, like a raven, and meant to live outdoors." 

John Alcock, author of Sonoran Desert Summer
"Bernd Heinrich writes with great authority and enthusiasm about the union of curiosity and science. The result is a wonderfully entertaining book about ravens and the excitement of discovery." 

Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, department of biological sciences, Stanford University
"Fascinating science and brilliant writing. Bernd Heinrich has done it again. 

Donald R. Griffin, author of Animal Minds

"This book is magnificently fascinating for two reasons. First, it tells us so much, and so entertainingly, about what Heinrich and his colleagues have learned about ravens. And second, it takes us along as his companions in field studies and thoughtful planning of scientific investigations. For a long time the mental experiences of animals were forbidden territory for scientists, but Heinrich's critically cautious observations, experiments and ideas have opened our eyes and our minds to the richness of ravens' behavior." 

  

Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor, Harvard University

"This is an amazing book by an amazing author. Heinrich is a scientist and naturalist of the first rank, champion ultramarathoner, woodsman of skills seldom seen in modern times, and not least, as Mind of the Raven illustrates, a nature writer of uncommon talent. By living with the ravens over many years, literally at home and in the field, he has documented a level of intelligence and social sophistication rarely even dreamed to exist in birds." 

 

The Trees in my Forest, HarperCollins, 1997

Library Journal

Zoologist Heinrich (A Year in the Maine Woods, LJ 10/1/94) lives in a 300-acre Vermont forest, of which he intended to sell parcels when he bought it 20 years ago. Instead he found his old interest in forestry reawakened, and he renewed his lifelong love affair with trees. Lucky for readers that he did this book is a gentle reminder of the grand adventure in nature, not just in exotic locales. Heinrich creates detailed portraits of his forest's life, from sex among the trees to ants herding aphids to a history of the majestic white pine, giving readers the full view of life in a healthy forest ecosystem. Heinrich has the ability to engage the reader instantly and to transform common settings into meaningful and educational experiences. Highly recommended for all natural history collections.

Wall Street Journal

"He writes with a graceful lyricism...to attract many general readers of natural history." 

New York Times

"These passionate observations of a place 'where the subtle matters and the spectacular distracts' superbly mix memoir and science." 

The Washington Post
"The Trees In My Forest is an engaging primer on the complex biological economics of the woods themselves...It's a quiet walk in stately woods...In Heinrich's hands, the lives of trees are as noble and as dramatic as the lives of men."

Kirkus Reviews
This lyrical testament to the stunning complexity of the natural world also documents one man's bid to make a difference on his own little patch of land. Heinrich (One Man's Owl, 1987, etc.) bought 300 acres of logged-over Maine woods in 1975 and set out to restore its ecological diversity. A professor of biology at the University of Vermont, he uses the farm as retreat, classroom, and research lab. Heinrich is a detective in the woods. He infers from the presence of pin cherries the location of old pastures and dates a 19th- century forest fire by examining growth rings and charcoal deposits. His scientific method is wide-ranging and inclusive, drawing on engineering, mathematics, zoology, biochemistry, forestry, and economics, encompassing both micro and macro views. For the former he scrutinizes saplings under a microscope and details the biochemical process by which trees manufacture wood. The big picture spurs musings on the vast interconnectedness of nature as he traces the mind-bogglingly complicated symbiotic relationships among plants, animals, and natural forces like wind and sunlight. Heinrich uses simple sketches to illustrate his explanations of the ingenious design, growth strategies, and reproductive methods employed by trees in their quest for survival. In his ultimate goal of creating a forest, a place of ``habitat complexity'' vastly different from the sterile monocultures planted by paper companies in the name of sustainable forestry, he succeeds admirably. It's a pleasant surprise, then, to learn that in the end Heinrich does well by doing good: Not only is he rewarded with a diverse plant and wildlife population, he also reaps a cash profit from responsible logging. Heinrich tells us more about trees than we'd ever dream of wondering, yet manages to transform the esoteric into a fascinating tribute to nature's superior design.

 

New York Times
"These passionate observations of a place 'where the subtle matters and the spectacular distracts' superbly mix memoir and science." 

Sue Bender, author of Plain and Simple and Everyday Sacred
"The Trees in My Forest is a celebration of observation--an introduction to the mysteries and wonders before us." 

James Prosek, author of Trout and Joe & Me

"Heinrich has neatly grafted art to his science giving us a lovely and intimate portrait of the Forest of Adam Hill." 

 

 

A Year in the Maine Woods, Addison & Wesley, 1994

Publishers Weekly
A professor of zoology at the University of Vermont, Heinrich here recounts a recent year he spent in the western Maine wilderness. With his pet raven Jack, he began his sojourn at the end of May. His cabin, without electricity or plumbing, sat in a clearing a half-mile up a steep brush-filled hill accessible only to four-wheel-drive vehicles. His mailbox was at the foot of the trail, and his nearest neighbors lived on the road beyond the mailbox. To keep in touch with family and friends, Heinrich, author of the National Book Award nominee Bumblebee Economics, installed a phone and answering machine in the neighbors' outhouse. He takes us through his busy summer and fall of chopping wood and making repairs to the cabin, all the while observing the wildlife around him. He battles with blackflies and mosquitoes, mice and cluster flies. In January he conducts an on-site seminar for selected students. For readers who love the outdoors, even vicariously. 

Library Journal
Heinrich, a zoology professor at the University of Vermont and the author of Ravens in Winter (LJ 8/89), has written an engaging book about his year of solitude in the southern Maine forest. Recalling Thoreau, he retires to a self-constructed log cabin, without electricity or running water, to study and write. Heinrich's account of the year is divided into four sections, one for each season, beginning with the summer that he set out for his cabin with his pet raven, Jack. Each section consists of small vignettes-some dated, as if from the author's journal, others lessons in biology, ecology, or astronomy. It is a tribute to his writing skill that the author quickly draws the reader into his world. From retrieving the spikes left by some Earth First! activists to making maple syrup to hauling dead calves into the woods for the ravens to feed on, Heinrich is consistently busy, yet he always finds time to run, rest, and meditate on the lessons the forest has to teach. This is a gem of a book.

Booklist
The journal is the form of choice for the neophyte would-be Thoreau. Heinrich is anything but a neophyte, and his journal is far more satisfying. It is what was once called "natural history"--scientific observation by a talented amateur with the "capacity to wonder," who "can spend hours per day wondering about `useless' things, like the tri-partite feather vane on an arrow (rather than one blade for a wing), like how a samara twirls in the wind." Effusions like that arrive after pages of meticulous, lyrical, tough-minded description. Heinrich's accounts of, say, climax forest equilibrium or building an outhouse are clinically scientific or pragmatic as an instruction manual, yet they rouse in us a sense of wonder and a desire to be there, alone in the woods, experiencing what he does, and believing that we could. (We forget he's a professor of zoology.) Some chapters are essays with morals, some reveal Heinrich's personal life, and those about his relationship with a young raven he names Jack deserve to be anthologized widely.