The Geese of Beaver Bog - Hardcover

Bernd Heinrich

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060197455 ISBN 13: 9780060197452

Publisher: Ecco, 2004

Synopsis

In the summer of 1998, award-winning writer and biologist Bernd Heinrich found himself the unwitting -- but doting -- foster parent of an adorable gosling named Peep. Good-natured, spirited Peep drew Heinrich into her world -- one he found to be filled with as much color and drama as that of her human counterparts.

And so, with a scientist's training and a nature lover's boundless curiosity and enthusiasm, Heinrich set out to observe and understand the travails and triumphs of the Canada geese, or honkers, living in the beaver bog adjacent to his rural Vermont home. His presence in the bog, at all hours, in all weather, became as commonplace as that of the local beavers and birds. The resident geese learned that Heinrich could be trusted, enabling him to watch and record their daily routines from up close.

Heated battles over territory, mysterious nest raids, jealousy over a lover's inattention, all are recounted here in an engaging, anecdotal narrative that sheds light on how geese live and why they behave as they do. Far from staid or predictable, the lives of geese are packed with adventure and full of surprises.

In The Geese of Beaver Bog, Heinrich takes his readers through mud, icy waters, and overgrown sedge hummocks into a seemingly impenetrable world. He does so with deft insight, respectful modesty, and infectious good humor. Illustrated throughout with Heinrich's trademark sketches and featuring beautiful four-color photographs, The Geese of Beaver Bog is part love story, part science experiment, and wholly delightful.

About this title

About the Author:

The author of numerous bestselling and award-winning books, Bernd Heinrich is a professor of biology at the University of Vermont. He divides his time between Vermont and the forests of western Maine.

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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About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060197455
• ISBN 13: 9780060197452
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240
• Illustrator: Bernd Heinrich