One Wild Bird at a Time

The acclaimed scientist's encounters with individual wild birds, yielding "marvelous, mind-altering" (Los Angeles Times) insights and discoveries In his modern classics One Man's Owl and Mind of the Raven, Bernd Heinrich has written memorably about his relationships with wild ravens and a great horned owl. In One Wild Bird at a Time, Heinrich returns to his great love: close, day-to-day observations of individual wild birds. There are countless books on bird behavior, but, writes Heinrich, "some of the most amazing bird behaviors fall below the radar of what most birds do in aggregate." Heinrich's "passionate observations [that] superbly mix memoir and science" (New York Times) lead to fascinating questions — and sometimes startling discoveries. A great crested flycatcher bringing food to the young acts surreptitiously and is attacked by the mate. Why? A pair of Northern flickers hammering their nest-hole into...