One Wild Bird at a Time - Bernd Heinrich

I've reviewed a couple of Heinrich's other books, which were focused more on biological studies he performed, mostly with birds. This book, on the other hand, is focused on his interactions and observations of specific individual birds over his years living in New England. Unless he's done a dive into the literature to see if what he's observed has been studied elsewhere, he's not necessarily drawing any larger conclusions about a species based on what he writes about.

For example, the first chapter is about a breeding pair of northern flickers that hammered a hole in his outer cabin wall and built themselves a nest there. The chapter consists of his observations on who did most of the work constructing the nest and how the pair behaved. Once there are hatchlings, Heinrich notes how often and when each parent brings food. That the male tends to just pick the loudest or pushiest babies to feed, while the female feeds each one repeatedly. He notes the behaviors of the young in the nest, the fighting for position to get food, and ultimately, how the parents try to coax their young to finally leave the nest.

Not all the chapters are about birds' nesting attempts, although most of them are. It's easier to observe a bird if you know it's going to come back to a particular location several times a day. Plus, the harshness of winter where he lives means birds can be scarce that time of year. 

That said, there are chapters about bird behavior he observed in winter, such a redpolls diving headfirst into snow for no immediately apparent reason. There's a chapter devoted to the dens ruffed grouse make under the snow, where he tries to determine how long and when they stay in them based on the amount of crap in the dens, and how grouse decide where to make a den. He tries making the opening of a few tunnels in the snow himself, to see if other grouse keep an eye out for things like that as a sign to den in that area. At the least, the tunnels he made with his boots were unconvincing, so he can't draw any conclusions on that. But it does give the book a casual air, of listening to someone describe interesting things they saw during a hike through the woods.

'Unfortunately it is illegal to take a live crow, although it is perfectly all right to take dead ones, after shooting them on sight for target practice. But what is legality, if it is legal to torture a goose or a duck by putting it in a cage where it can't move, shoving a tube down its throat, and force-feeding it to make its liver fatty in order to make foie gras for people to spread on crackers?'