From 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.
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
